Taking place a century after fire burned down the library at Alexandria, this story revolves around two protagonists: a barbarian who somehow walks around Alexandria wearing furs without issuing a drop of sweat or having any inkling it's even remotely warm there. The other is a woman posing as a man and whose name Heron. Heavily in debt, Heron accepts money from the barbarian to resolve who set the fire and why.
Both the author and the barbarian he writes of seem completely ignorant that these questions have been answered already! That information has been known literally since the year zero! It was Julius Casaer who ordered the fire - not to burn 40,000 scrolls in the library, but to burn some ships that were docked in the nearby harbor. The fire got out of control. Mystery solved.
That wasn't why I quit reading this and DNF'd it. The reason was the poor writing and the interminable introduction to the story during which literally nothing happened save for the decriptive writing, which alienated me from both main charcaters. If I'd initially paid a bit more attention I would have noted that the book cover had the word 'saga' on it and I could have saved myself the trouble of even picking-up this one in the first place! My bad. I really need to learn my lesson here.
I can't commend this one at all based on what I read of it.
