The Rise of Zenobia is set in what is now called Syria, around 300AD, when the region was a Roman province facing apparently irrevocable decline. Although many local leaders remained loyal to the emperor, far to the west, military pressure from independent tribal groups as well as the Persians was almost intolerable. In consequence the trade routes which had brought wealth to the inhabitants had largely collapsed.

Buy The Rise of Zenobia from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Rise of Zenobia from Amazon.com

This is the rather sombre setting, with its continual sense of impending doom, that JD Smith has chosen to write about. The cast of characters is a mixed group of individuals, mostly drawn from a single extended family and their retinue, who are striving to preserve the way of life that they know. The question which dominates the book is whether Rome will be either willing or able to help, or whether the region would be better served by cutting loose altogether.

The story is told in two threads – one in the “present day”, when the protagonist Zabdas is an old man, and a series of flashbacks describing his younger life and the key events in it. Zenobia, the woman of the title, is a key figure in the earlier events but missing from the later thread, and one is led to assume she came to a bad end somehow.

This brings me to a key difficulty – the book is only the first part in a longer series (“Overlord“). A great many issues are raised and put on hold, presumably to be revisited in a later volume. Personally I find this frustrating, and I was left with a sense that the work was unfinished. The specific break-off point did not seem particularly significant, as though it had been driven more by word count than plot.

On a technical level the Kindle copy I read had been nicely prepared. A noticeable number of errors had slipped through the editorial net, but not so many nor so serious as to be a real barrier to reading.

So, mixed feelings for me about the book. The setting is interesting and unusual, the characters are quite diverse, and the story is certainly worth telling. But on the other hand the lack of completion was a negative point for me, and I can’t say that I particularly warmed to any of the individual people. Perhaps too much narrative space was devoted to campaigning for me, or else to long and frustrating journeys, to get much feel for what was being safeguarded. I’m not sure I was led to really care what happened to the people or their culture; given the very obvious echoes in contemporary Syria this is a great shame.

Four stars, on balance, and I’m still undecided if I want to buy into the rest of the series.

Omphalos is a beautiful book. Mark kindly provided me with a pre-publication proof copy which I eagerly devoured. I have enjoyed Mark’s writing since coming across Undreamed Shores a couple of years ago (see The Bookworm’s Fancy blog as well as Amazon and Goodreads). Omphalos is a more elaborately structured book, peeling layers of history back successively from the present day back to the time of Undreamed Shores, then returning layer by layer to the present day.

The closest analogy I have read is The Source, by James Michener, but Mark achieves here something which in my view is more memorable and more human. The Source tended, despite the author’s efforts, to lose the personal dimension against the grand sweeps and calamities of history. Also it progressed linearly forwards through history rather than giving the sense of diving deep, and then slowly surfacing again. Mark, while still setting his various characters in times of flux and crisis, never allows these settings to obscure personal dramas and interpersonal relationships. Sometimes the links between the layers are obvious; other times there are only little clues in the narrative to spark the connection.

Omphalos explores one of the great themes of human life – what is it that unites us with past generations, and what is it that divides us? The divisions in term of social customs and attitudes are certainly present, but common threads abound. As well as individual emotions and actions, the theme of unity is externalised into aspects of nature, and most obviously into the centrality of the ancient sacred site on Jersey around which these many worlds pivot.

An obvious consequence of the layered structure is that we spend less time with any one person and context. There is a slight frustration here: I wanted longer with each of them. But that sense of Time’s Winged Chariot hurrying near is also a theme of the book – as new generations are cut free at birth from the navel of the world, their time is all too short.

Omphalos goes on sale very soon: December 5th, to be precise, and there is an online launch on that day. I can thoroughly recommend that you find out for yourself what this book is like. Five stars so far as I am concerned, without a doubt. Hopefully, like me, you will reach the end, lean back with a sigh, and think “ah, what a beautiful book this is.“

As many of you know, I review books for the Historical Novel Society (HNS) and part of the deal is that they appear first on the HNS web site. So here are two reviews from the last batch: they can be found online at:

The Wessex Turncoat (http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/the-wessex-turncoat/)
and
Do Not Forget Me Quite (http://historicalnovelsociety.org/reviews/do-not-forget-me-quite/)

Now for the reviews themselves…

The Wessex Turncoat
The Wessex Turncoat follows apprentice blacksmith Aaron Mews, from his home near Fordingbridge, Hampshire, through forced entry into George III’s army, over to Canada. The second half of the book describes his part in the disastrous 1777 campaign against the rebellious American colonies.

The period and setting were new to me, and it was an interesting narrative choice to follow – a failed campaign rather than a victorious one. This threw the focus on Aaron himself, who comes over as a passive character, though loyal and very much a survivor. Many of the characters are stereotyped – the nice corporal, the nasty sergeant who is actually well-meaning, etc – and the main strengths are the descriptions of the age. Aaron is propelled here and there by his superiors, and by the social structures of his time, and only near the end does he start to make decisions for himself. Appropriately, his dominant experiences are of loss and difficulty.

There are several plot lines which are raised but never resolved. This probably reflects Aaron’s own inability to pursue them, but in the context of a novel they are frustrating. Similarly, the ending was left unclear, and I would have preferred to know more about the choice Aaron is making: is this perhaps when he becomes a turncoat? The later chapters are rushed in comparison to the gradual unfolding of earlier ones.

The book is well presented and proofread and reads as gentle in content – war, hardship, sex and violence are constant parts of Aaron’s life, but are described in very mild terms, which would make this suitable for younger readers as well as adults. The story will appeal to those wanting to immerse themselves in depth into lower-class, seventeenth-century rural and military life. It also delves a little into the cultural mix of the emerging United States.

Do Not Forget Me Quite
Do Not Forget Me Quite spans nearly twenty years of a family’s life, starting on the eve of WWI. The main focus is on the father, John, who feels morally obliged to enlist in the medical corps as hostilities commence. His wife Emma resents this, and in part the book explores the ensuing personal and family distress that follows for the couple and their children. The most evocative section is when John is invalided home before the end of the war, and John and Emma are forced to confront the consequences of their choices. Towards the end of the book Emma fades out, and their eldest daughter replaces her as a female protagonist.

Readers should be aware that the book is, and feels, very long. The focus shifts between several family members, and intersects with the life of Ivor Gurney, a significant musician and poet of the time. I found myself wondering whether it would have been more effective for Richard to split the ideas between two or more books? The apparent coincidences bridging the different scenes were not easy to follow, and did feel very contrived.

Technically the book has been well proofread and presented, with chapter and section breaks clearly signalled with year indicators where appropriate. Cream paper rather than the white used is more relaxing for the eye, however. I wondered about occasional turns of phrase which seemed too modern, but mostly Richard uses variations of dialect to suggest the home areas in England of characters.

The book will be enjoyed by readers who like exploring the land battles of WWI from the perspective of comparatively unimportant participants who have no possibility of making significant change to the setting or the system.

The Devil’s Monk is set in the turbulent days after the reign of Alfred. The background, then, is a time of enormous transition for Britain. There was political and military struggle, as Angles, Saxons, and Danes contended for mastery of the land and the older British tribes were squeezed out. There was religious change, as Christianity gradually lured people away from the older gods. And, at least for the central character of this book, Bald, there is personal transformation, as he decides over a period of years what he can contend with and what must simply be accepted.

Buy The Devil’s Monk from Amazon.co.uk
Buy The Devil’s Monk from Amazon.com

Bald, through whom we witness the events and people of the age, is a herbalist. He is known to the modern age through the pages of an old medical text, The Leechbook of Bald, now in the British LIbrary. Jack has done a good job of filling in a hypothetical biography for Bald. It is never altogether clear whether Bald’s medical successes are due to the remedies he prepares, or the result of sympathetic attention to the real causes of malaise. Even today, cures and healings sometimes defy explanation, and Bald’s world view is well suited to his role, being deeply rooted in the old ways, with a weak grasp of the healing role of Christ as sufferer overlaid on top.

On a storytelling level, it took me a while to settle in to this book, since the first part seemed rather disjointed. As the dichotomy of Bald’s simultaneous power and impotence came to the fore, the tale held me more. Secondary characters also get more development in the later stages. It is not a fast paced book, but the subject matter does not require it to be, and the story is better suited to the slow unravelling of hearts, lives, and nations that we find in the pages. There are frequent citations from the herbal manual woven into the plot, together with a few extracts from the poetry of the age; these add to the atmosphere, though the translation used from the Old English is sometimes heavy going.

Overall for me this was a four star book. I enjoyed reading about the history of places which I know in contemporary England – Eashing, Winchester, London, York and Glastonbury among others. The historical research which has gone into the book seems solid. However, it was a book which interested me intellectually rather than engaged me emotionally. I would have enjoyed it more if the emotional dimension had been more accessible.

At about the same time I also read A Twisted Cross by the same author, an exploration of one of the crusades. Here I felt that Jack had not given himself enough narrative space to do his subject justice. Social differences and prejudices are well handled, but religious views less so, and in a way which to me spoke more of modern habits of thought than medieval ones. The short format left too much unexplored about a potentially fascinating period and range of characters. This book would have gained a lot by having the same systematic exploration of the main character as was done for Bald in The Devil’s Monk.