{"id":422,"date":"2014-12-29T15:29:07","date_gmt":"2014-12-29T15:29:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/richardabbott.authorsxpress.com\/?p=422"},"modified":"2014-12-29T15:29:07","modified_gmt":"2014-12-29T15:29:07","slug":"review-the-rise-of-zenobia-by-jd-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/2014\/12\/29\/review-the-rise-of-zenobia-by-jd-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Review – The Rise of Zenobia, by JD Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Rise of Zenobia<\/em> 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.<\/p>\n

Buy The Rise of Zenobia from Amazon.co.uk<\/a>\"\"<\/em>
\nBuy The Rise of Zenobia from Amazon.com<\/a>\"\"<\/em><\/p>\n

\"CoverThis 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.<\/p>\n

The story is told in two threads – one in the “present day”, when the protagonist Zabdas<\/em> is an old man, and a series of flashbacks describing his younger life and the key events in it. Zenobia<\/em>, 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.<\/p>\n

This brings me to a key difficulty – the book is only the first part in a longer series (“Overlord<\/em>“). 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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

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.<\/p>\n

Four stars, on balance, and I’m still undecided if I want to buy into the rest of the series.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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 … Continue reading Review – The Rise of Zenobia, by JD Smith<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,16,18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-422","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical-fiction-2","category-reading-challenge","category-review"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=422"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/422\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=422"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=422"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/richardabbott.datascenesdev.com\/blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=422"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}