AUTHOR: Harry Sidebottom
PUBLISHER: Overlook TP
RATING
5/5 "Julius Ceasar"; 4/5 "Mark Antony"; 3/5 "Spartacus"; 2/5 "Caligula"; 1/5 "Sillius Soddus"
SCORE: 4/5
"Write what you know" is probably good advice for first-time authors, and Fire in the East shows us the virtues of following this dictum. However, there is such a thing as overdoing it, as the novel falters when it steps away from the author's area of expertise.
There is no arguing Harry Sidebottom knows his Roman history. He holds a doctorate in Ancient History from Oxford University's Corpus Christi College, and now lectures on the subject at the same university. He is the author of two books and a number of articles and reviews on Roman history and ancient warfare. This is undoubtedly a man who knows his gladius from his gluteus maximus. While his rhetoric may not be up to Cicero's standards, the freshness and realism of the book help propel it over the sometimes clunky prose.
In Fire in the East, Mr Sidebottom's first work of fiction and the first book in a planned trilogy, he sets the stage during the so-called "Crisis of the Third Century", the period between 235 and 284 AD, when Rome came to within an imperial whisker of total ruin. The economy was in tatters, barbarians were invading, and if that wasn't enough, the army had invented a new form of imperial succession known as "stab the man in the purple toga". No sooner had one general proclaimed himself emperor than he was assassinated by followers of another, or even by his own disgruntled troops--25 men ruled in the space of 50 years.
Into this tumult Mr Sidebottom throws Marcus Clodius, or "Ballista" (a kind of catapult) to his chums, a former barbarian hostage turned Roman general. The emperors du jour send Ballista to defend the Syrian city of Arete, on the eastern edge of the empire. There, Ballista's small garrison is expected to hold out against a massive invasion by the Sassanid Persian army--Alamo for the swords and sandals set, with Ballista in the Davy Crockett role. The word "Arete" means "virtue", but its people ironically turn out to have precious little of it. Ballista's already hopeless mission is further complicated by rivalry with one of his commanders and the disappearance of another, and mounting evidence that there is a traitor at work in the city.
The first section of the novel is redolent with the murmurs of Roman life. Here Mr Sidebottom's learning proves its worth, filling the early pages with details of ritual and religious observance, of banquet manners and bathing customs. His Romans feel like Romans, not just Englishmen in bed sheets. In the second section, Mr Sidebottom's familiarity with the gears and cogs of the machinery of war enables him to put us on the barricades with Ballista and his men during the siege of Arete, giving us a sense of the brutality and madness of ancient war, equal easily to anything produced in the killing fields of Baghdad today.
It's when he wanders from these strengths that Mr Sidebottom's footwork fails him. His prose is sometimes as square-cut as a Roman profile. The novel opens with the clunker, "War is hell. Civil war is worse". He has Ballista add a clumsy appendix to Ben Franklin's famous phrase, telling the leaders of Arete "if we do not all hang together, we will all hang separately on the cross of crucifixion". He sometimes overdoes the Latin, producing such battering-ram lines as: "'May I present the decurion, commander, of this turma, cavalry unit, of the cohors?'"
The novel also suffers from the lack of a tangible villain, a Santa Anna to Ballista's Crockett. The Persians exist only as cannon fodder and plot device, no more worthy of hatred than Star Wars stormtroopers. True, there is a traitor in the city, but the threat never builds and the revelation of his identity and motives feels not like a payoff, but like a cheap sandal to the posterior. Likewise, the antagonism between Ballista and a snobbish subordinate gathers some initial traction, then quickly peters out once the Persians heave into view.
Then there is the problem of Ballista himself. Giving the reader an outsider as the main character is often a device used to ease us into an unfamiliar setting, as we learn about the culture and customs along with the hero. Here, however, we meet Ballista when he is already an established member of the Roman political and military class, so making him a barbarian serves no purpose other than to enable Mr Sidebottom to populate his work with various stand-ins for modern British: Ballista himself as a pseudo-English nobleman, with his Caledonian (Scots) servant and Irish bodyguard. You wish Mr Sidebottom would decide whether he wants to write escapist fantasy or historical realism. Treating the fall of the Roman Empire as a kind of Dan Dare adventure very nearly destroys the credibility Mr Sidebottom has so painstakingly built up.
Nearly, but not quite. The odd misstep in tone and character aside, there is still a lot to like about this novel, and it is such a rarity and joy to find an author who masters both the military and social aspects of Rome. Mr Sidebottom does indeed know the Romans, and has laid himself a strong foundation for the next book in the series. I for one will be buying a copy.
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