Rating: WARTY!
Note that this should not be confused with The Field of Mars by Kari Ellis or with The Field of Mars by Stephen Miller, neither of which I've read.
The title of this story makes it sound like some Star Wars style sci-fi story, but it isn't. Mars here is used in its original sense - as the Roman god of war. This is a story about Roman legionnaires or legionaries as they're called here, and it begins at the real life Battle of Carrhae fought in 53 BC.
When I first began reading this, I read "The enemy tactics were starting to affect the entire century. More and more legionaries were coming to the aid of their fellow infantrymen." This sounded a bit odd to me, but when I looked into it, the description is correct. Centurions were actually the officers, legionaries the NCOs as it were, so this author evidently knows his stuff.
The problem with knowing one's stuff is also in knowing when and how to employ it. I am not a fan of authors like Tom Clancy and David Weber who insist upon larding-up their stories with excessive technical detail regardless as to whether it's factual (in the case of Clancy), or fictional (in the case of Weber) or even especially relevant to the story being told. For me you can invent detail for all I care, as long as it at least sounds realistic, but I'm far more interested in the story and the characters. Give me dearth or give me freedom to read something else!
My hope here was that this author wouldn't over-do it, and I have to say that my hope seemed to be forlorn when I first began reading. There were so many Roman names, all of which were given in their full three parts, and there was quite an info dump, with foreign words being given for ranks or equipment, each then immediately post-ceded by an English translation.
I'm not a fan of this style of writing either. Maybe other readers truly go for this, but for me, I'd rather just get the English word and not have the text cluttered with the historical term. For me, I don't even need to be told that the soldier drew his gladius. Simply saying he drew his sword is fine as far as I'm concerned. Fortunately, this section passed quickly and I was soon able to focus much better on the story rather than upon these frequent reminders that I was reading a story!
There were pleasingly few errors in this novel - proving that it's entirely possible, as I've long maintained, to put out a good Kindle ebook copy! The only problems I noted were ones of word use, such as "...this portents a victory." This should have read, "this portends a victory." Another was one I see often these days: "...staunch the worst of the bleeding" which should have read "...stanch the worst of the bleeding". You can stanch blood staunchly, but you can't staunch blood stanchly!
Another minor issue I had was with the mix of "authentic" Roman with modern idiom, so we’d end up with a Roman name followed by something completely out of modern street talk, such as: Dentiatus said, "We don’t got no baggage train." Which really stood out like a sore thumb to me. I don’t expect an ancient novel to necessarily have ancient language or emulation of it. Indeed to the Romans living then, the things they said were contemporary idiom to them just as much as the things we say are to us, but to mix in a phrase like that really made me stop believing I was in the moment and brought me right out of it.
One thing which irritated me in this novel was nothing to do with the novel per se, it had to do with the endless names ending in an "uss" sound. In short order, this became tedi-uss! This is the problem in writing about ancient Rome. Nearly all the men's names actually did end with that sound. You had to go to the females to get something different and somewhat less boring, but even so, the female names largely ended with 'a', so it wasn't that much better.
So how do we get around this? Well, one way is to quit it with the unnecessary repetition of three-barreled names. One use of the name to establish it should be the limit! After that, use only the first or the last name - or better yet, toss in a few nicknames to get away from the triple 'us' routine. Remember that not every Roman actually had a three part name and not every Roman had a name ending is 'us'. There were names like Ballista, Buteo, Casca, Cato, Cinna, Civilis, Macer, Niger, Saxa, and Valerian which were male names.
So I think on balance, although I enjoyed reading parts of this, and overall, the novel isn’t a disaster, the ending rather fizzled (and yes, I realize it’s just part one, not really the end) and in the final analysis, it’s just not for me. I found that I have no interest in reading this again or in going on to find out what happens next, so I can’t recommend this.
