Pairing ancient Roman history with sci-fi seems like a recipe for a book that I would love, so when I saw this on NetGalley I had to request it!

The premise is fascinating: a Nobel prize winner finds a way to build a time machine that somehow manipulates spacetime to retrieve objects, animals or even people from the past. The further back the time machine goes, the longer the object can stay in the present, and it’s unclear what would happen if it weren’t returned.

The book starts off with a chapter from Caesar‘s perspective before switching to the main character Cassandra. Both seem rather at random because after that, the other team members are introduced in great detail including their back stories. Of course it’s interesting to get to know them better, but eventually none of them really matter to the plot which made me wonder why there was such a big focus on them at all.

Anyway, the characters were well written but I didn’t connect with them and at the end of the day didn’t care for them. Oh, Alex was great of course, but I wish he had played more of a part in everything. Still, introducing the side characters at length meant that the time during which Caesar was finally brought to the present time felt extremely rushed.

Of course, much of the fast pace is due to everything that happened. But I would have liked it much more if there had been more of a focus on the moral aspects and the philosophical questions that were touched upon: What can history really tell us? What will we just never know? What to gather from an unreliable narrator? And rather than just saying everyone might die if he doesn’t return to the past, would it be justifiable to keep Caesar in the present? What consequences would that have for him and for humanity today? And not to forget that researcher who found the coin that was mentioned in the beginning - even if her good name couldn’t be restored, there wasn’t even any debate about whether it was okay that she was collateral damage for the experiment. Those are all things that I had hoped would be discussed, but weren’t sadly.

All in all, this was an interesting book and I‘m happy I read it, but I didn’t like the ending (which suggested that these were real events, because as a physicist: just no), and I think there were some things that could have been better.

3/5 stars.

If you could pick anyone dead or alive to have dinner with, who would it be? In A Coin for the Ferryman, that person is Julius Caesar.

This is a time travel novel that takes place in the recent past – 1999. A Nobel laureate physicist has cracked time travel, the only catch is they must know the exact time and place the person they want to bring to the future has died. There are quite a few options that would make sense, JFK, Lincoln, but none spark the same fascination as Julius Caesar. This novel tells the story of Caesar’s travel to 1999 for 4 days, and as one would expect, things don’t go to plan.

This is an interesting novel to review, because it has a lot going for it, but it does have its pitfalls. First, I could tell a lot of time, effort, and research went into this novel, and upon my own curiosity I found out the author has a degree in classics and has been working on this book for 20 years. The love and passion shows, and I’m very happy for this author getting her novel published.

With that being said, I think the novel is a bit too long. It’s 540 pages and I think it could be edited down, maybe taken 100 pages out. There are a lot of POVs – essentially every character we see had at least 1 POV chapter, but I don’t think it was all necessary. I will say, Edwards ties each character up in the end, but I didn’t think it all impacted to the primary arch of the story. There was a large section in the beginning of the novel that gives backstory to the physicist Andrew Danicek and team members with smaller roles, but it took a while for me to figure out how it connected to the larger story and I almost DNF’d it if I’m being honest. I’m very glad I continued reading this story, but I wish some of that would have been taken out. I did feel some satisfaction once I got to the end, but again it would not have missed it if it had not been there in the first place.

Once we get into the meat of the novel and encounter our main character, Cassandra, and Caesar I was really into this book and got through it so quickly. It reads very cinematically, and I could see it easily being adapted into a movie – think the likes of Angels and Demons or The Da Vinci Code. We have a fun historical character, an attempted kidnapping, romance – it has a lot going on, but I ate it up and would LOVE to see it on screen!

Another thing I loved is the chapters are really short. This novel is long, but the short chapters make it move pretty quick. I’ll also say this is 100% a plot driven novel. That isn’t normally my cup of tea, but again, I was into it, and it’s probably because I’m interested in ancient Greece and Rome. If you’re looking for huge character development, or not interested in Caesar, move along.

This novel sits somewhere between a 3.5-4 star for me. It originally was more like DNF-2 star, but it got a lot better as it went and I can appreciate the way the author ended it. If you can suspend your disbelief, hang with a little corniness in the ending, and like a lot of plot, this novel could be for you!

Thank you to NetGalley and Imbrifex Books for the advance copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Thank you to the publishers, author and NetGalley for the free copy of this book.

This was definitely an interesting read. Wasn't what I was expecting from a time travel story- it wasn't quite focused on the sci fi aspect of it at all, which actually kind of worked for this. I didn't quite connect with the characters though, and it was a little bit of a slow burn.

Thank you to the publisher, Imbrifex Books, and NetGalley for providing me with an eARC of this book in exchange for an honest review.

Nobel Laureate Andrew Danicek gathers a group of elite researchers and scholars to work on a top secret project at the IDES lab in California – a time travel experiment to bring Julius Caesar from moments before his assassination into the present for four days. They plan to use this time to learn as much as they can from him, but despite the tight security and detailed planning, someone has learned the details of the goings on at the lab and attempts to kidnap Caesar. It falls into the hands of Cassandra Fleury, the youngest of the team, chosen for her ability to speak fluent Latin, to keep Caesar safe from their pursuers and bring him to the lab in time so that he can be returned back to the Ides of March. Missing their deadline to send him back could have grave consequences for the future of the world.

I can never say no to a time travel book, and when you add in Ancient Rome and Julius Caesar on top of that, well I requested this book before I even fully read the synopsis. This take on time travel was a really interesting one, not least because it was reverse time travel which I’ve never read before. It starts off in a setting that is academic with all the elements of a tense and groundbreaking research project in progress, and then pivots into thriller territory that kept me turning the pages. It’s a combination I haven’t come across before, but it definitely works in this case. It doesn’t delve into the science part of it all a whole lot, which I would have loved to know more about, but chooses instead to focus on the background of each of the IDES team, showing the reader glimpses of their lives and their mindset going into the crucial final stage of the project. However, the fact that the whole experiment involved them bringing someone into the present from the moment of their death instead of them travelling through time posed some fascinating ethical dilemmas involved in the process, something that Caesar’s final moments with the team makes the reader consider.

The IDES team is a diverse group of characters, and the story takes time developing each of their arcs to some extent. Most of the story is narrated from Cassandra’s POV so hers was the easiest to understand and follow. Julius Caesar’s perspective too was an interesting one, and useful too, because his initial interactions with the team weren’t anything earth-shattering, and getting inside his head gave a better idea his character. I was also surprised at the way the author chose to portray Caesar for the most part, showing a more human and flawed side to him rather than how history perceives him, but it was a smart choice, I think as it made the story that much more realistic. While I’m a huge fan of detailed character development, I don’t think this book needed quite so many POVs. Some of them barely had two chapters and there was nothing particularly momentous in them that could not have been conveyed through a different character’s POV.

The beginning of the book, close to 40% actually, was painfully slow. The only reason I kept reading was because I could see it was heading somewhere good, but I don’t think quite so much time needed to be spent on introducing characters and setting the stage. One thing that didn’t make much sense to me was that this 20-something undergraduate student was more of an expert in Latin than the two professors with PhDs and decades of experience on the team. I also thought that the ending was too rushed – apt, but it would have been nice to see it through Cassandra’s eyes like most of the rest of the book instead switching the POVs of other characters, that too set several years in the future. The tension level was really high during the last chapter and the tone of the concluding pages was just so different that it fell flat.

Overall, this was a fun time travel adventure, and a unique one, though it does take a little patience to get through it. This was a very enjoyable read and I would recommend this for any history fan.

I found the concept of A Coin for the Ferryman to be thrilling–moving through time to interact with history–but the reality of time travel scares me, as I feel the human race would abuse the discovery.

I do not know much about Caesar but liked that Megan wrote his character in a good light, making him seem open minded as well as a great warrior, which he is documented to be.

Cassandra, a Latin student, was brought into the team of would-be time travelers because of her knowledge of Latin. She was clever, gifted and beautiful with strength she did not realise she possessed. A fortunate encounter changes Cassandra’s life forever in ways she could never imagine.

It would be interesting to read about her life after the Caesar interlude.

Including the gold coin in the story was a clever idea -in future when I find something out of place I will wonder where it really came from

Whilst I enjoy this book, I found it lacked something – this could have been due to distractions whilst I was reading. There are a few points in the story that left me with questions, unfortunately if I asked them, it would give away parts of the story!

I give A Coin for the Ferryman 4 stars, as I like the originality of the story.

ARC provided by Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.

2,5 stars. A Coin for the Ferryman follows a group of scientists who have found a way to bring people from the past to the present. They enlist the help of Cassandra, a young classics student who is fluent in Latin, which will come in handy, since they are planning to invite Julius Caesar to the present for a visit.

As a classics student myself, I’m always looking for books to read about classici, so when I read the synopsis for this book, I was very interested in reading it.

When I started this book, I was immediately intrigued by the chapter written from Julius Caesar’s point of view. I was very curious to see how this character would react to being stranded in a strange, modern world that he does not recognize, but his character quickly became almost a caricature of the historical figure. I think when trying to describe the thoughts of a historical figure, about whom we don’t know too many accurate personal details, it is hard to not make it overly dramatic and almost cartoonish, but sadly it did happen here. Caesar is thrust into this modern world and he’s curious, but he is not really fazed by it all because he is always one step ahead, even when he’s thrust 2000 years in the future. This just seemed a bit unrealistic for someone who’s still just a man.

Another problem I had is that there are too many characters, and it didn’t help that they all get their own povs, which feels very unnecessary at times. In the first big chunk of this book, they are simply working on this time travel machine without any of the mechanics and details behind it being explained and without anything much happening.

I did really like the writing, especially in the chapters from Cassandra and Faith’s povs, though I do wish we had seen more of Faith’s pov. I thought she was an interesting character. Cassandra was a character I really liked at first but as the story progressed and became more dramatic I just couldn’t really feel for her, because she was making these bizarre decisions. At this point I would have actually welcomed more of the other characters’ povs. The book definitely suffered at the end as the story gained more cliché tropes.

Overall I did have a fun time reading this book and I think that if this premise interests you, I definitely recommend you pick it up for yourself. I just think I would have enjoyed it more if the characters were more fleshed out and if the approach to the concept of time travel were a bit more detailed.

I was really excited about this book, and marked it as one of my most anticipated 2022 releases in my reading journal. The premise is so unique: Julius Caesar time-traveling to 1999 right before the Ides of March and his imminent death? What kind of hijinx would occur? How would the author expand and build upon what we know about Caesar and turn this into more than just a rehashing of history and weave something more fanciful?

I still think the premise is super unique and intriguing. However, this book really fell flat for me in a lot of ways, unfortunately. There would be build-up for a couple of chapters, right when you think you're going to dive into something substantial there would be a chapter fleshing out some backstory of a tertiary character that we never hear from or see again. This really affected my enjoyment of reading it because the pacing seemed off in a lot of ways.

I can tell that the author loves this world that she created, and wanted to share all these details about the slew of characters and give their backstory, but the way backstory was introduced didn't really seem to flow in an organic manner. For example, one chapter the setting is a dinner with Cassandra (the protagonist of the story) and her sort of mentor figure, and then all of a sudden we're in a flashback of the mentor that has nothing to do with the meal being shared, or add anything to that setting. It was a little jarring and disjointed. This feeling happened multiple times, and I kept waiting for a payoff of why we were getting these seemingly random backstories, and it never came. Even with all the backstory for the cast of characters most of them don't feel like they have much depth, and act in ways that were kind of baffling to me.

I think there is definitely a great story in here, but this book is lengthy (the paperback totals over 500 pages), and I think editing this down quite a bit would make this story much more satisfying and enjoyable.

It's one of those "Me, not the book case". It's well written and well plotted but I didn't care for the characters and the story fell flat.
Not my cup of tea.
Many thanks to the publisher and Netgalley for this ARC, all opinions are mine

This is at heart a romance novel. I'm not familiar with the genre, so take my opinions with that grain of salt.

Our heroine is a would-be hooker with a heart of gold and a steel trap mind who is saved from her Fall by a fortuitous billionaire (good-looking, heart-of-gold, and war hero helicopter pilot) who becomes her Fairy Godfather. On the basis of her mind (okay, her goddess-like appearance also helps), she gets hired to spend 4 days as hostess to Julius Caesar, who is plucked from Rome in a time travel experiment run by a handsome Nobel Prize physicist with a backstory. Everybody in the cast is some combination of brilliant, rich, and gorgeous.

The book contains a lot of soft-core wealth porn: sensual descriptions of the clothes, food & drink, housing, and pleasures of the fabulously rich. The actual sex is PG; it is not nearly so lovingly described.

The plot serves mainly to get us from one fabulous setting to the next. The time travel element is pretty interesting, but it's used here as a device to get our heroine next to a man who's even a bigger deal than a billionaire or mere celebrity. There is an attempt to inject some suspense, but it sort of fizzles.

*Received an advanced copy via Netgalley*

2.5/5

The premise of this book was intriguing and sounded right up my alley - ancient Rome along with sci-fi elements - but it just kinda missed the mark for me. The first half of the book was slow with a lot of background for characters who we never really saw later on. At the halfway point things started to pick up, but it still just felt anti-climactic to me.

It’s well written and it’s clear that there was care and a love of classics present in every page of the book, but the characters and the pacing just fell flat for me. I’d still definitely recommend this to someone who is more of a classics and non-fiction reader than I am.

A Coin for the Ferryman starts out in the present, but quickly moves to 1999-where the bulk of this story actually took place. A scientist and Novel laureate, Andrew Danicek and Eric (I don't remember his last name), another character, figure out time travel. There are three stages for time travel and they've successfully passed the first two stages. The third stage, transport a human from history to the present (1999). Through much discussion, they choose Julius Caesar. After a lot of research and team members being added, the day finally comes. Julius Caesar arrives from the Ides of March right before his death. He will have the choice to remain there for four days or to leave seconds after arriving. Cassandra, the beautiful, fully fluent in Latin, college student, is the one that is tasked with translating for Caesar. Of course, seconds after his arrival things start to go bad. Then they go from bad to worse. Cassandra ends up being the only person that makes sure Caesar returns to the Ides of March.

The title jumped out at me as I'm a big fan of mythology. Upon reading the synopsis, I was excited, time travel?! I was instantly excited. The beginning of the story did start out slow, but the ending was fast. I had to force myself to put the book down so I could go to bed!

I enjoyed the this take on time travel. It's not one you typically see in sci-fi; usually the person is going to a specific period, not bringing someone into the present. I liked how Caesar was always calculating and appeared "cool". I did quite love the ending and got so wrapped up that I thought it was real (for a hot minute - I was tired).

I would definitely recommend this book to sci-fi/time traveling fans.

ARC provided by Netgalley for an honest review.

I was intrigued by the premise of this book, and was willing to suspend disbelief, because… well time travel, and Julius Caesar visiting present day L.A.

But ultimately the numerous characters and their complicated but irrelevant back stories, and the casual sexism of the main characters turned me off enough that I had to slog to make it through.

I voluntarily read and reviewed an advanced copy of this book. All thoughts and opinions are my own.

I wanted to like this, I really did. I love ancient Roman and always had a particular interest in the Caesars, so this blend of historical fiction and scifi seemed like a fun way to delve into that. I knew it would be a little absurd and farfetched, but I was ready to embrace the absurdity and enjoy every bit of it. And yes, some parts were a touch too far fetched, but that wasn't what ultimately killed this book for me.

What most took away from it in the end was all the unnecessary sexism in the whole book. (With sprinklings of fatphobia, xenophobic stereotypes, weird handling of sexuality, and other issues. I'm sure if the characters weren't 90% white, there'd be plenty of racist microsaggressions as well.) The book is set in the 90s, but it doesn't need to have harmful baggage straight out of the 90s as well.

Beyond that, so many things just fail to live up to the potential. Caesar adjusts to the 20th century with little question, the 'romance' is sped through and mostly implied, characters are constantly popping in and out with underdeveloped side stories. Overall, this was a disappointing read at the best of times and an uncomfortably misogynistic one at worst.

An interdisciplinary team is gathered together in a secret laboratory to work out whether time travel is possible. The team decides to bring a figure in history from the past into the present, and they succeed, bringing Julius Caesar himself to the future. But, time travel is a tricky business, and their experiment threatens the course of history itself.
As a Classics MA and BA, my area of interest is in Latin literature and the politics of Imperial Rome so I was very intrigued by the premise of this book, however I was disappointed.

A Coin for the Ferryman finally answers the age-old question: "What would Julius Caesar think of Las Vegas?". Actually, that never question occurred to me until I started reading this book, but it is an interesting one!

The novel follows a team of brilliant minds (including a Nobel prize winning physicist, several classicists, a doctor, and a really cool undergraduate student who knows how to speak fluent Latin) who embark on a mission to bring Julius Caesar to the United States just before the year 2000 starts. In addition to being a blast to read, the book also touches on the culture of academia and the role of wealth in intellectual pursuits, especially with ancient fields of study. I think anyone who has an interest in classic Rome history and or time travel would enjoy this book. A book club would likely have fun discussing the ethics of time travel, and perhaps who they would choose to transport to their time. The best word to describe it is a romp!

That being said, I noticed a few minor issues that might deter another reader from finishing this. On the big-picture level, the beginning started quite slowly, with introductions to a large cast of characters taking up the first half of the book. A die-hard science fiction fan would likely note the lack of intense scientific terms and explanations (however, someone who enjoys the historical aspect of time travel narratives, like me, appreciates that!).

A few more granular details: Though this is even acknowledged by the book, the time travel project team completely forgot that Caesar was a tactical mastermind. While this led to some interesting hijinks, I found really implausible that all of the bright minds who can make time travel happen forgot such an important part of Caesar's identity. There was also some uncomfortable sexist language towards the protagonist, Cassandra, actually on the part of another female academic. I would've enjoyed the book a lot more if this was left out entirely.

However, if anyone is willing to put those issues aside like I did, I think they would enjoy this book greatly. I've certainly never read anything like it!

Thank you, Imbrifex Books and NetGalley, for the early release of this book!

I'm so very glad I went into this book blind and didn't have any idea what it was about or what to expect. In A Coin for the Ferryman, we follow a team that has built a machine that can transport things through time. They need to know exactly when and where people are about to die in order to do that, as they snag them just before the moment they would die, to lessen the impact on history, and then return them just in time to die. The assembled team is a rag tag bunch of characters that I thoroughly enjoyed, and their interactions were hilarious to witness.

So, when you can bring someone forward in time and you need to know exactly when and where they will be, who do you choose? Caesar, of course! I loved seeing the modern world through his eyes and being along for the ride that was this book! It was a wonderful surprise and I loved every moment of the journey!

I'm a big fan of time travel in any form so I had high expectations of any story that brings Julius Caesar from 44 BC to 1999 AD. What could go wrong? Lots of things and Megan Edwards deals out the challenges like a veteran card dealer in Las Vegas.

Set in 1999, the finely crafted and sometimes flawed characters are brought together for one purpose and they all follow the script until it gets changed, cue the bad guys. This story isn't a romp through history, it's a well planned journey through the lives of a group of people who are trying to do the impossible for four days.

The story brings up a question. If you could bring back anyone in history
would you? Should you?

this was so fun i studied classics at university and im always interesting in reading books about it so i was glad to read this one it picks up quickly and the writing was good the characters were interesting to follow and it was intersting to see how the relationships between the characters change throughout the story and it addresses the dubious morality of return Caesar back in time knowing he would die i was wondering if the time travel would seem believable even in universe but i enjoyed reading it

This time travel book was historically accurate and quite enchanting! I thoroughly enjoyed it. I thought there were a few instances that were a bit blurred in meaning, though.

This was a bit of a silly book.

And I'm not talking about the plucking-something-out-of-time aspect. I am completely fine with violating linear time.

No, my main problem was that the beautiful young Latin-speaking Las Vegas woman is enabled by a bereaved billionaire on her first attempt at being an escort, and he's also called on to help at other points in the narrative. This is deus ex machina in a way I find even more unbelievable than the appearance of Godzilla.

Anyway. Latin-speaking woman gets to college and ends up in a group that will bring Julius Caesar to the future. Why Caesar? No really, why? This is another problem, and one I really don't get. It's not properly answered at all, from a Watson perspective: the characters do not present a good reason to choose the man other than the ability to pinpoint time and date of death (and even that I'm a bit side-eye). From a Doyle perspective, I guess Caesar allows the author to do some fun things? Make a few good puns? I dunno. I was also not that impressed by the portrayal of Caesar as a character.

The book itself is well enough written - I finished it after all, and the pacing is smooth and fast enough that I didn't get bored. I liked that the story was from multiple perspectives, although some of them seemed redundant - especially the insertion of back story that was completely irrelevant.

Overall, a bit disappointing.