Britannia (Eagles of the Empire 14)

A special love of mine is a new Simon Scarrow Macro and Cato book. There's few excitements that beat the rush of reading about my two favorite Romans. I was curious to see where Mr. Scarrow would send our illustrious heroes and surprised that Britannia and her Celts had more punishment to deal out to Macro and Cato. This is surprising because the governor or Britannia had died at the end of Brothers in Blood and I knew the next major occurrence in Britannia would be due to an old Flame of Macro's; besides, Claudius should die soon and we all know the changes would be significant. Instead Mr. Scarrow decided to keep our boys in Britannia and take what could have been a fairly minor skirmish for them into a full scale battle with good intrigue. I'm actually blown away with much of this because the growth I've seen in both characters The Legion is surprising given how far this series has come. If that wasn't surprising enough, the story since returning to Britannia has continually improved, making for better books each time. I'm afraid to call this one a 5 star because I often feel it's over used but can say I can't wait to re-read it (is that good enough indicator of 5 stars?).

Great

This Eagles of the Empire series by Simon Scarrow is the best series I've ever read. Every book has been hard to put down. The main characters of Macro and Cato really grow on you and it's exciting to follow them through their adventures. You learn a lot about Rome and the Roman Empire as well as it's military campaigns, strategies and weapons. Mr. Scarrow has done serious research in every region in which his stories are set so there's lots of historical accuracy. He will admit when he has taken literary license to "fill in the blanks" where there's missing information. I love this series!

This is the second book I’ve read by Simon Scarrow and he’s quickly become one of my favorite authors along with R.W.Peake, and a few other excellent authors writing of the Roman legions. This book is well written with fully developed characters that are characters in a wonderful tale. Joe Corso author of Lafitte’s Treasure.

5 estrellas. Muy emotivo, entretenido, acción continua sin respiro alguno, pero algo triste al final saber q los “Blood Crows” ya no serán parte de las aventuras de Cato y Macro

Showed moral and physical strength of Roman armies.

The March at the end had me glued to my seat. That alone made the story great. I enjoyed this novel more than the previous ones in the series. You really feel for the characters, and as much as I disliked Cato before, he really comes through in this novel.

Spoiler Alert beware. I am a huge fan of this series by Simon Scarrow. I think the author is running out of things to write about. Many phrases and situations are becoming extremely repetitive. While the overall plot is great this part of the series is filled with extra fillers. What I mean by extra fillers is that there are points in the story that are just thrown in and do not contribute to the plot and in fact take away from the story. Filler 1: Cato pledges personal loyalty to the the legate who dies shortly after: This is a filler at the start of the story and isn't touched again throughout the book. Julia dying seems to be too outside the plot: It seems very disconnected from the actual story line. It just adds several paragraphs to how "Cato is feeling." Maybe killing of Julia was the author's plan all along but it could have been done better and could have been written into the plot much better. Cato gets the news, he is very sad. Few pages later... Cato is very sad.... ten pages later..... Cato is very sad but overcomes it and does some killing... thirty pages later... Cato is still sad. I honestly think the author is writing filler stories. You can see the main story line is leading Nero's ascension and then to year of four emperors where their friend Vespasian will become emperor. The story is dragging to get to the historical climax and its dragging me unwillingly to read these fillers without joy.

The plot is nice and the storytelling fast-paced as usually happens with Simon Scarrow's novels. But there are grave inaccuracies I need to point out. First and foremost, the main hero, Quintus Licinius Cato has now become Marcus Quintus Cato. Now, that's really bad. Afterwards, I didn't like at all some scenes like: assaulting a fort at the head of a cavalry squadron, then dismount just below the walls and put scaling ladders there. First, how do you carry the ladders? Second, you would lose all your horses, just wandering around after you simply dismounted and left. Third, Caltrops were well-known by Celts and subsequently copied by the Romans. So, charging headlong towards a fort at the head of a cavalry squadron translates in as many horses lost in the process, impaled by caltrops and traps galore. Which would not be a very bright thing to do. Now, I liked a lot all the previous instalments. They were quite realistic, despite their depicting some extreme situations at times. But here, events and scenes are over the top and unrealistic. I believe any novel, entertaining and fictional as it may be, should at least strive to teach something and be coherent with reality. Just my opinion

Macro and Cato formed a solid team, i am going to read the next story without waiting, expecting that their aventure lasted a longtimes

Britannia von Simon Scarrow zu lesen hat wie bei all seinen anderen Büchern viel Spaß gemacht. Scarrow schafft es einfach, ein historisch-lebendiges Setting herzustellen, welches seinen Storys und Charaktären zusätzliche Tiefe verleiht. Einziges Manko ist eine kleine Diskontinuität im Lauf der Story, die ich aber hier nicht nennen mag, um nichts zu verraten. Mich würde es auch freuen, wenn die beiden Protagonisten bald einmal wieder die Location wechselten, da die Insel der Kelten so allmählich beginnt, langweilig zu werden. Aber vielleicht überrascht uns der Autor hier ja bald.

Well written by an incredible author. A real page turner

Loved it - as much as like the other 13 previous books in the series which I have devoured, one after another. I just don't understand the comment by another reviewer that it was disappointing. I thought this was just as gripping, witty and un-put-downable as all the rest. The combination of battles, high drama power politics and the camaraderie of the participants in the face of impossible odds is seriously compelling. I also love spotting the occasional witty translation of a modern phrase that gets translated into 'Roman' times. The amphora is definitely full for me as long as Simon keeps writing this wonderful series. Now where's number 15? I guess our heroes are going to have to head back to Rome now.