The Marius Mules series has been running for over ten years now. I’m not sure when I first came across it, but I’ve enjoyed the story of Marcus Falerius Fronto and his adventures. His role as a legate and associate of Julius Caesar has allowed Simon Turney to take him all over the Roman world and involve him in most of Caesar’s campaigns.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ 6/10
The author has always said that the series will end with volume fifteen, so we’re not far from that end, and this entry sees Fronto with Caesar in Alexandria following Pompey’s murder there. But the Consul is far from victorious yet. The civil war is meandering on, and although Mark Anthony is looking after things in Rome, many of Pompey’s allies are still in control of important provinces and substantial armies.
In Alexandria itself, Caesar has taken Cleopatra’s side in the dynastic struggles of the Ptolemy family, but is trapped in the city by a far larger Egyptian army, and the situation is critical. Unless loyal reinforcements arrive soon, the city will fall. Making everything more difficult is Caesar’s growing personal relationship with the queen, which threatens to split his staff, some of whom think his loyalty to her is blinding him to the needs of Rome and the Republic.
Against this background, Fronto does his best to concentrate on his job as legate, using his legion to defend the city, while trying to stay out of all the political manoeuvring. He is feeling his age, and wondering about the future, but can see that sides are being drawn and it will be difficult to avoid having to choose.
At the beginning of this book, the author has, unusually, added a forward, warning the reader that the events mainly take place in a small geographical area, which can get complicated, and he helpfully provides maps of the city to guide us.
It’s almost a prophetic warning, because this book was, for me, one of the weakest in the series. That small physical area means that the story becomes claustrophobic as well. The course of the siege is handed down to us by a number of ancient writers, the accuracy of most being suspect. The author has carefully selected his sources to make the best story, but it all seems a bit ‘this happened’, then ‘that happened’.
Fronto comes across as something of an afterthought, slotted into a story where he has little agency or opportunity to affect events. Yes, there are battles, both on sea and land, where he once again shows his mettle. Yes, we see his fractious relationship with Caesar. But the book wouldn’t be much changed if you took him out completely, and for the first time in the series, I found myself bored among the minutiae of the geography of Alexandria.
As always, the author tells a good story, and whenever the action escapes the city, his skills draw us along with interest. But for most of the book, the balance between history and fiction is too strongly weighted towards a rather mechanical telling of the history. I’m hoping the final volumes in this series swing the balance back.
This is a review of the Victrix Books 2019 Kindle edition.
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