Review: An interesting read.
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 06 20, 2014
Wolves of Rome is an easy-to-read novel that tackles an historical subject that you don’t see very often in fiction:  the Second Punic War (218 – 201 BC).  Although the ending is predetermined – always an issue, with historical fiction – the characters here and the author’s way of personalizing the war through them keeps the story fresh and the reader very engaged.  In fact, I thought character development was one of the novel’s strongest aspects, especially considering that the players here are pretty well known to history.  The author’s ability to flesh them out in a way modern readers can sympathize with was impressive.I do have to say that the dialogue bothered me, on two accounts.  Firstly, the characters very rarely – if ever – used contractions, even though the narrative prose made appropriate use of them.  I’m not sure if this was intended to give the feeling that the reader was ‘listening’ to an old, translated language, or if it was meant to give the speakers a statelier aura.  Or maybe there’s a language rule at play here that I’m unfamiliar with…  In any case, I felt constantly distracted by it, over and over again.  Secondly, I found the dialogue to be distracting in the battle scenes, too.  My mind would be fully engulfed in the vibrant and admittedly gory brawls, and then I would lose a few beats as two characters started philosophizing against each other.  I just found it a little bit hard to suspend belief, at that point.But, the novel is overall very well structured, and the plot more than makes up for a few annoyances like that.  A line editor could have come in very useful, as well, for spelling and grammar.  I would have to say, though, that in the end this is a great, fresh look at a dramatic moment in history, and I would recommend this to all of my history buff friends.