Review: Keep your wife under control!!!!!
Rating: 4 out of 5
Date: 08 26, 2012
I really enjoyed the first book of this series and this one is of an equally high calibre. Darman can write. His research is good and the whole story comes to us with a sound historical basis combined with a fast moving plot full of heavy political intrigue, devious villainy and high voltage action. Pacorus is a truly engaging hero and the majority of his followers are also superbly developed characters. One of the things that bothered me here though, was the total breakdown of the character of Gallia; wife of Pacorus. From the feisty, wilful and fierce beauty of the first book, here she becomes headstrong, arrogant, aggressive and just plain stupid: her totally unbelievable histrionics become a seriously annoying side-show to the more believable events taking place. After each military engagement, regardless of the result, I was longing to see Gallia do us all a favour and finish up in a body bag. In this she disappoints, but I do hope in the third episode she is presented in a far more sensible role, or has the decency to die early.I also found that, despite the desperate, bloody battles taking place there seem to be absolutely no deaths of any of the central characters that form part of Pacorus's inner circle. Apparently, anyone close to the King automatically bears a charmed life.I take a exception to those reviewers on this page that complain about grammar/typos, etc. I complained about editing in the first book but found the editing here to be acceptable, certainly way above the usual Kindle standard.I solidly recommend this book and look forward to reading the last of this excellent trilogy.