Product Description

Southern Anatolia, 260 AD

The town of Edessa, a Roman outpost, is on its last legs, besieged by the Persian troops of Shapur I. Roman Emperor Licinius Valerianus agrees to meet his adversary to draw up a peace treaty, but it is only a trap and the Emperor and his twelve guards are chained and dragged away to work as prisoners in a solitary Persian turquoise mine.

After months of forced labour the Emperor dies, but his guards make a daring escape lead by the heroic and enigmatic chief, Marcus Metellus Aquila. They meet a mysterious, exiled Chinese Prince, Dan Qing, and agree to safeguard his journey home to reconquest his throne from his mortal enemy, a eunuch named Wei.

Thus begins the adventures of the Romans and the Prince as they journey to China. There they will discover that they aren't the first of their kind to arrive in China: they were preceded centuries before by the survivors of the 'lost legion'.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #182327 in Books
• Published on: 2006-10-06
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 288 pages

Daily Echo
'Fast moving, epic tale of the meeting of two civilisations'

About the Author

Valerio Massimo Manfredi is professor of classical archaeology at Luigi Bocconi University in Milan. He has published nine works of fiction, including the 'Alexander' trilogy, which has been translated into 24 languages in 38 countries. He has written and hosted documentaries on the ancient world, and has written screenplays for cinema and television.

Customer Reviews

Not what it promises on the cover
The idea of a novel exploring an encounter between Rome and China - the two great Empire of the classical world - is a fasncinating one. As the author says, there is evidence of a certain small amount of contact between them and there is almost certainly a place and a market for a 'what if' novel along the lines of Kim Stanley Robinson's "Years of Rice and Salt". However: you should be aware that this is not it.
It starts excellently; the author knows his Roman history and there is a clear sense of time and place in the adventures of a group of Legionnaires captured by the Persians with Emperor Valerian at Edessa in 260AD. This, however, takes more than the first half of the book, as the soldiers are condemned to slavery, escape and end up hooking up with a lost Prince of China. Whereas the first half of the book is a well-studied and interesting piece of writing, when we finally arrive in China we're suddenly in a high-kicking chop-socky spectacular.
The clash of styles is jarring.
The most awful thing is that much of the second half of the book appears to be written with half an eye to the movie rights. As you read, you can hear Hollywood script agents saying "It's high-concept! It's Roman Legions versus Wire-fu Ninjas! It's Gladiator meets Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon!" As an action film, I can see the value - the cash tills will be ringing. As a novel, it jars and doesn't convince. Used as we are to the uncompromising professionalism and stolidity of the Romans, the sudden arrival of (literally) superpowered ninja in a quasi-historical novel breaks suspension of disbelief. It's rare I put a book down without finishing it, but 60 pages from the end I had to make a conscious effort to read the painful deus-ex-machina conclusion.
I'm giving the book three stars because the first half is a good read. The second half is an unconvincing pitch to Hollywood with lead characters plainly modelled in the hope that Jet Li and Zhang Ziyi will be playing them. I like both historical epics and ludicrous kung-fu action adventures - I'm just not sure that they belong in the same book.

You will enjoy this book if you liked The Last Legion...
I think that you will like this book if you enjoyed The Last Legion. The writing is similar. One thing that I enjoyed about it was that it focused on events that have not been done to death. Instead of yet another book on Attila or Nero, here we have a book that takes place at the end of the reign of Valerian and also during Gallienus's rule. After Valerian and some of his soldiers are captured they are forced to work in a mine. After the soldiers escape, they travel across Persia and India, eventually winding up in China. Personally, I enjoyed the book before they got to China. I took off one star for the ninja stuff, which got a little ridiculous. I could see a sequal to this novel taking us into the time of Aurelian, who is also a character in this book.

Don't write it off so easily, give it a chance.
I brought this book because I was so found of the alexander series written by Valerio Massimo Manfredi and the Roman era it is set in. It isn't really historical fiction as all the characters are fictional, but it does its best to capture the essence of the period its set in to begin with.

However it soon loses this because as the story progresses the location changes from Rome to China. The story is about a commander in the Roman army who is captured, he escapes with his men to find that he must go to the ends of the earth before he can even think about returning. He finds that in even such far away place as China there are disturbing parallels between his world and theirs and that he must fight for the same cause that he left at home.

The book moves fast through just under 400 pages and doesn't linger on events for more than a chapter or so. There is little character development, except for that of Dan Qing, the Chinese prince and Metellus, The Roman Commander, and this only develops near the end of the book. I enjoyed the story and thought it was a new approach to the genre. It reminded me a little of the story of the last Samurai.

The book needed more depth and seemed rushed, especially the "last battle" which seems rather anti-climatic. The language and structure isn't very advanced and some is rather cringeworthy but you get use to it and don't notice it as the story progresses. However I did feel that the end was satisfying and leads up to a sequel oppurtunity which I would also give a chance and read.

So don't be put off by bad reviews if you like a light read with an intriguing and different story line, then give the empire of dragons a chance.