They're out to get me
Aug. 29th, 2007 04:16 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
pjthompsonRandom quote of the day:
These books by Roberts are rather amusing and entertaining. Not the creamy prose of Steven Saylor or the emotional complexity, but fun. And they are interesting to read in tandem with Saylor's books as they cover the same time period in Roman history and often have very different takes on the same events. Roberts's MC, Decius, is a sarcastic, iconoclastic upper crust Roman, while Saylor's stories revolve around Gordianus, a common man with uncommon talent, who is trying to survive in the cutthroat world of the last days of the Roman Republic. And--they fight crime! Both of them.
The other thing I like about the Roberts books is the uncomfortable subtextual parallels between 1st century BC Rome and contemporary America. Or maybe that's just my reader's 50 percent. But I don't think it is.
These books by Roberts are rather amusing and entertaining. Not the creamy prose of Steven Saylor or the emotional complexity, but fun. And they are interesting to read in tandem with Saylor's books as they cover the same time period in Roman history and often have very different takes on the same events. Roberts's MC, Decius, is a sarcastic, iconoclastic upper crust Roman, while Saylor's stories revolve around Gordianus, a common man with uncommon talent, who is trying to survive in the cutthroat world of the last days of the Roman Republic. And--they fight crime! Both of them.
The other thing I like about the Roberts books is the uncomfortable subtextual parallels between 1st century BC Rome and contemporary America. Or maybe that's just my reader's 50 percent. But I don't think it is.
no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 02:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-08-30 04:34 pm (UTC)Hmm. Maybe it's not so subtle.