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The story rotates through multiple perspectives, including that of Agrippina, Nero’s two mentors, and Nero himself as he carouses with friends and learns about administering justice, which he does with his own personal spin.
With various conspiracies afoot, one can admire Agrippina’s quick reactions and guile while deploring her terrible actions. Her son absorbs her lessons all too well, disdaining her control after being proclaimed emperor at just 16.
Iggulden crafts characters and historical atmosphere with finesse. In scenes simultaneously exhibiting the might, extravagance, violence, and utter alienness of first-century Rome, captive Britons are forced to fight mock sea battles in an immense arena for entertainment purposes until one surviving crew member remains. “They liked to see aggression . . . aggression and blood,” thinks one participant, and the novel offers plenty of both in a vivid, exhilarating plot.
Conn Iggulden's Tyrant was published by Pegasus in the US in May; the UK publisher is Michael Joseph, and that cover is very close to the one above (with different endorsements). I reviewed it for Booklist in April. Nero plays a larger role in this novel than he did in the first, where he was a child, but his mother, Agrippina, is a character you can't look away from. I think she's Iggulden's most memorable character yet.
The mock sea battle was called a naumachia, which you can read about online in the Encyclopedia Romana, hosted at the University of Chicago. Spanish painter Ulpiano Checa imagined it onto canvas in a work from 1894. The spectacle in the novel is seen from the viewpoint of Caractacus, a chieftain of the British Catuvellauni people who was captured and brought to Rome for entertainment... and who's forced to fight for his freedom.
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| Ulpiano Checa, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons |
