Book #36 Clash of Empires

A bit of a longer period between reads again, I just haven’t read too much this week, and it’s not good of me! I chose an author who I have heard wonderful things about, set in Ancient Rome once again. There’s something about historical fiction set in the Roman Empire that is just so appealing! There are so many different series, and of the few I’ve touched on so far, they’ve all been different, yet compelling reads.

So Clash of Empires. What drew it to me was the cover, it’s bold, colourful and quite imposing. It was another recommendation from Goodreads, but as mentioned above, Ben Kane was not unknown to me although I haven't read any of his stuff before.

The history of the book centres around war with the Early Roman Republic, and the Macedonian forces under the command of Philip. The first part however, sees both Empires at war elsewhere, as tensions rise in the Mediterranean. It's not a period of history that I've ever read much into, but it's one that I've played plenty of on Rome: Total War, so the troops involved weren't alien to me!

Overall, I did enjoy the book, but found myself getting a bit disinterested at points. The book tells the story from four viewpoints. Demitrios, a member of one of the Macedonian Phalanx; Felix, a Principes legionary; Philip, King of Macedon; and Flaminius, a Roman Politician who eventually becomes Consul and leads the Roman forces in the war. Whilst I enjoyed the various viewpoints, I did find it got a bit confusing after a while, especially as it wasn't clear at the start of each chapter whose viewpoint we were now on!

Of the four viewpoints, I found Flaminius' storyline least engaging for the majority of the book, as it just seemed to me to be a bit of political chess, and not much really happening. Philip's political storyline was better, but I'd rather have seen the storyline played out through the eyes of Felix and Demitirios. I actually think seeing the viewpoint from the eyes of the common soldier was refreshing, and not something that I've come across often in Historical War books, it's usually always told from Officers or Non-Commissioned Officers viewpoints.

Overall, the story was good and flowed well. The timeline of the story is well set out, with the whole book taking place over several years. The action scenes flow well, they are fast paced and well thought out and researched well. It's one thing that I've found with all Historical Fiction, they're all very well researched and every book has a great section at the end with the historical notes for each book.

I've given it 3/5 stars on Goodreads, the main reason was my disinterest in Flaminius' storyline, and also the fact that the book just... stops. I haven't actually looked, but I can imagine that there is more in the series that I haven't found yet, so hopefully the dissatisfation at the ending can be assuaged!

Clash of Empires: 2.5cm

Total Read so far: 36 books, 111cm

Total left to read: 82cm