Et tu, Sidebottom?

TITLE: King of Kings
AUTHOR: Harry Sidebottom
PUBLISHER: Penguin

RATING
5/5 "Lord of the Rings"; 4/5 "Prince of Bel Air"; 3/5 "Queen of Hearts"; 2/5 "King of Pop"; 1/5 "Ace of Base"
SCORE: 3/5

If there's one thing the Romans had a talent for, even more than oratory and regicide (et tu Brute and all that), it was for getting on the wrong side of history's Samuel L Jackson types. Hannibal of Carthage, Attila the Hun, and the Sassanid Persian Shah-an-Shah, the King of Kings.

The last was for centuries perhaps the most dangerous. The Sassanid Persians were the only regional "superpower" that could fight the Romans on anything like equal terms. It's this conflict that forms the focus for Harry Sidebottom's "Warrior of Rome" series, and provides the best bits of the second installment, "King of Kings".

The first novel, "Fire in the East", was hugely fun. Mr Sidebottom teaches classical history at Oxford University, allowing him to bring tremendous depth to the subject. His fist novel was vivid, detailed, richly imagined and with a clear narrative focus that drove the action like a circus charioteer. Ballista, former barbarian hostage and now Roman general, is sent to defend the city of Arete from a Persian invasion. He travels to the city, readies the defences, then leads his men in a desperate but hopeless resistance.

"King of Kings" suffers from a lack of similar story arc. Here, you feel Mr Sidebottom is mainly playing for time, shuffling the pieces on the board in order to set up a cliffhanger ending. This leaves his characters at loose ends for prolonged periods. We pick up with Ballista as he flees the fallen city. He becomes a general again, fights a battle, gets sent to persecute Christians in the Anatolian city of Ephesus, quits and gets called back to the colors again. While "Fire in the East" built nicely from the first sparks to the final conflaguration, "King of Kings" gutters in the breezy subplots, never building much heat until the final few chapters.

To constructively fill the time, Mr Sidebottom recycles a number of old enemies, as well as the "whodunnit" device of the first book. There, Ballista faced a traitor in the city, here, a string of assassination attempts. Mr Sidebottom's portrayal of Christians also echoes the less than heroic role they played in "Fire in the East". More orthodoxly religious readers may find his squabbling, fanatical Christians a little disrespectful.

Still, if it's Romans red in tooth and claw you're after, Mr Sidebottom is your man. Ballista isn't shy about spilling a little claret, as he carves his way through assorted assassins, rioters, pirates and Persians. The setting remains richly detailed and imagined, giving you an enjoyable peek at Roman life. Mr Sidebottom's scholarship shows in other ways too, such as the winks he throws to readers who know their Roman history. When Ballista's chum Aurelian gets on the wrong horse, for example, it's more than mere accident.

With so many enemies, it was inevitable that the Roman Empire would end badly. See Decline and Fall Of, Sack Of, etcetera. Let's hope the "Warrior of Rome" series avoids the same fate in the final novel, "Lion of the Sun".