I must say that I think both authors must have lived a previous life in this age as their research and level of detail is amazing.
This is a great story but one that you have to immerse yourself in. It is well written but i just did not get drawn in to the story so that I was addictively wanting to turn on to the red the next page. I can understand that this can be difficult of a story of such magnitude and so much detail needing to be explained but I just needed something that would keep bringing me back to the book.

This is the first in a series of books and I am excitedly looking forward to the second book

I’ve been looking forward to this book for years. I’m a very big fan of both Turney and Doherty, and they’ve long mentioned this joint enterprise, so I was hugely excited to get cracking with this.

Told from the point of view of two Roman Emperors, from childhood to their rise to the purple, this is a very well written book. The two men have very distinctive voices, and as they’re written by the two authors separately, we get two very different viewpoints on the events taking place.

Where I felt a little let down was with the pacing of the novel. I love both these authors for their ability to write books that race along at a pace. With this book, I felt the story was slightly stilted however, and I found it easy to put the book down.

So let’s hope book 2 ups the pace, I’m still very much looking forward to it.