A Flavour of the Book: “With a unanimous gasp, the entire circus rose to its feet. Castor had fallen heavily on the wooden pole of the yoke. This pole had snapped in two and now he was being dragged along the course by two panicking horses…”
The Authortrek View: This
is a very engaging novel about the Circus Maximus. Flavia, Nubia, Jonathan and Lupus are called to Rome to
investigate the disappearance of a horse from the Green team by their strange
new acquaintance Scopas, who may or may not have been brought up by centaurs. It’s not long before the four young
investigators have found the horse, through little of their own efforts. After a while, it appears as though someone
is sabotaging the Green team, someone whom the horses trust… Could it be the trainer of the Green
team, Urbanus, or their new friend, Scopas? Nubia still has nightmare visions of fire, and while her
empathy with the horses is unparalleled, could her lack of understanding for
humans lead her into danger?
Caroline Lawrence successfully brings the Circus Maximus to life, the
Roman equivalent of the Premiership.
However, I thought that she was trying to be too educational at times,
as the young investigators often interrupt the flow of the story to ask what a
word means, even the English ones, despite there being an excellent glossary at
the back. Then again, Caroline
Lawrence’s use of “Pollux!” as a swear word is delightfully cheeky, but I am
sure that there is an historical precedence for using it. While never reaching the heights of
Lindsey Davis or Steven Saylor, the masters of the Roman mystery novel, The
Charioteer of Delphi is a fascinating journey into a world that is never
far removed from ours’. Caroline
Lawrence successfully utilises Roman mysticism to make the story even more
fascinating (at one point, Nubia thinks that a character may be the god Jupiter
in disguise). However, the most
thrilling part of the novel for me was Caroline Lawrence’s depth of research. Her relation that some of the characters
were based on real historical figures gave me great delight, and will
doubtlessly enthuse all her readers to find out more about the Roman world.
To find out more about the author, please visit our Caroline Lawrence page.
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