Meh. These kind of details ruined it for me:
"I will write a letter to James, in case you are delayed in your journey." This was spoken to a trained Roman soldier, with travel papers, orders from the Emperor, on.a.horse. How did the author envision a letter arriving for James first?
Nevermind the fact that this is a member of the Praetorian Guard who is nobly exiting his service at a young age without incident-- to do what? Why to build a lovely villa on the island of Cyprus and raise horses, of course.
Also, there seemed to be an inordinate number of blonde people.
Also, the millennial girl that drove the story was flat and annoying.
I hate to do this to a good, clean, Christian story. But, there were both strong spiritual truths and hard historical facts that made up the backbone of this story, and they were muddied with 21st century western culture-- and that just seemed lazy to me.