Simon Scarrow, Headline, 2010
This is one of the series of books that follow the careers and friendship of Cato and Macro, two Roman soldiers in the first century AD. In this book they are in Egypt, pursuing the leader of a slave rebellion that they had defeated in Crete.
They get outwitted by him in the Nile delta and end up in the south of the country with the 22nd Legion, The Jackals, defending the province from a Nubian invasion.
Cato and Macro are believable, well-rounded characters who have been honed into shape over the last nine books.
Cato is the younger. He is the brains, the one with the potential to go far in the knife-edged world of Roman imperial expansion with all its internecine plots. Yet there is a naivety to Cato that keeps him forthright in his judgements and prone to keep to a clear moral code, causing him endless difficulties with his superiors.
Macro is the gruff career soldier. A centurion with no ambitions to be anything else. He has seen Cato grow from a spindly youth to a formidable leader. Macro is solid, physically and mentally, reliable and a great friend to have watching your back. But he is also quite blunt and intolerant of incompetence or subtlety.
The story romps along and the two protagonists have to deal with problems on the Roman side as well as from Ajax, the slave rebellion leader. Ajax is another engaging character, and we see the world through his point of view at various times in the story. In any other context we would be rooting for him. A fact that Cato recognises.
The tension is maintained throughout the story and there is no let-up in the chase by Cato and Macro. Simon Scarrow explains at the end that he has spent time on the Nile, experiencing what his characters meet in the novel. Yet, I was unconvinced about the description of the mangroves and the relative ease with which the soldiers cut their way through it. I have not been to the Nile delta and it could be that the mangroves there are different to the kind I have met in sub-Saharan Africa and the Pacific. The plants I know would not allow easy passage for anyone. It was exhausting climbing up, over stilt roots, down onto soft mud, across murky water, then up over more roots, cutting through low branches and spiky climbing shrubs, and then realising the last hour had moved you forward a hundred yards or so. The narrative emphasises the difficulties (including crocodiles) but it didn’t resonate with my experience somehow. I didn’t, though, allow such anomalies to make me fall behind on the adventure. I put it down to a difference in vegetation characteristics.
During most of the story the point of view is shared between Cato and Macro. Yet I didn’t feel I’d got into the psyches of these men. There is some introspection from Cato about his fiancé, Julia, and Macro is not the sort of character to analyse his feelings, but I still felt the characters were not changed by their experiences. This may be due to me not being attuned to them by having read the whole series, but I think it is probably that the adventure is always front-and-centre in the story and its all about Cato thinking through the complexities of each problem and Macro using common sense and toughness to support his friend.
I enjoyed the story. I’ve read some of the early books in the series, so it was good to meet Cato and Macro again. I will be looking to read some of the other books in the series.