Birds of Prey: Birds of Prey

by David Drake

Rome, 262 A.D:

It had been the capital of the greatest civilization on Earth. Now both city and civilization are dying. Germans flood across the borders from Britain to the Bosphorus, leaving a trail of rape, carnage, and ashes. In the cities, mobs riot; in the countryside, cults seek salvation in dark rituals. Imperial unity has shattered into a mosaic of separatists and usurpers, squabbling among themselves as greater enemies gather to swallow them all.

One man stands between humanity and the Long Night, matching his savage determination against a hopeless future. He is Aulus Perennius, an Imperial secret agent as tough and ruthless as the age in which he lives. Until now, though, his enemies have all been human...

Genres: Science Fiction, Fantasy, Fiction, Historical Fiction, Alternate History, Military Fiction, Speculative Fiction

348 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

David Drake is an American author of science fiction and fantasy literature. A Vietnam War veteran who has worked as a lawyer, he is now one of the major authors of the military science fiction genre.

Reviews

[Tim Hicks]

I suppose that I should have expected this from the author of "Hammer's Slammers" and any number of other books. And let me note that it was written in 1984, and we've come a long way since then.

Immensely capable Roman version of James Bond. Oh, cool, a vaguely described alien and a partner who is HINT, HINT more than he seems. And the novel equivalent of Superman's Jimmy Olsen to come along and be impressed. Hack, slash, gore, maim. Travel, travel. Sea monster!! Ah, nothing happened. But partner seems unsurprised. HINT, HINT.

At sea. Pirates!! Time out for a lecture in medieval shipbuilding and oar handling. Shame to waste all that research. Especially when we are going to see that Drake did all that research just to work out 187 ways to mangle people. Guts! Brains! Swords struck in bones! Eyes gouged out! Isn't this great? What? No, no, it's OK - don't you understand? These are Bad Guys, so anything goes. Oh, alright, I suppose; I'll have the hero show a moment of doubt, and even indicate that he prefers not to kill unless someone needs killin' and then By Golly I'm Going To Bury My Huge Sword Deep Into His Pancreas And Watch Him Die, Die, Die - but I promise not to enjoy it.

Pause for a lecture about shipbuilding and the strategy of ramming. OK? Great, it's bloodbath time again. Let's kill us some Germans. Horribly. Hey. they were trying to kill us, c'mon.

So ... these women in the plot. It's time to have them raped. Let's show how tough they are by having them shrug it off like a flesh wound. Oh, and let's turn over one more card that has another of my partner's secrets.

Hey, Drake! What happened to those aliens that were going to Take Over The World And Only Our Hero Can Stop Them? You haven't got all that many pages left! OK< I'll wait.

Peaceful village. Our worldly diplomat hero genius doesn't suspect for a moment that These People Are Not What They Seem. Well, of course. What's an adventure novel if the adventures don't get captured and Face Mortal Peril? Let's spend two pages explaining that the guard is experienced and smart, then pull a highly implausible trick and make him kill his brother. OK, spoiler, but c'mon - if you got this far you know that everyone they meet is going to get hacked to death with buckets of blood, so where's the spoiler? Did you think they wouldn't escape? OK, back to the Really Nice Village. Lucky for us they're all in the church, every last one of them, so we can Burn Them To Death And Listen To Their Screams.

OK, let's get out of here. Holy cow, lookit - a DINOSAUR! Well, sure. And you'd better stay away from the lake because I'l bet there's a kraken in it. Run! Run! Whew. OK, now about those aliens. I'll put on my 80-pound armour - Drake is careful to tell us it weighs that much. Now I'll put the spare armour on the end of a ten-foot pole and hold it out in front of me while I crawl through this tunnel. Hey, WTF, it's dark in here, there are probably grues. Partner? Got a magic ball of light? Yes, I rather suspected you might.

Aha - an Evil Alien. Zap! Hah, neener, neener, you got the empty armour. Zap! Hah, my bronze armour can handle your feeble megawatt zapper, without which you are about as tough as Marvin the Martian. Take that! (SPLAT!)

And then ... are you ready for the ending? Are you sure? There will be spoilerage.
OK, here we go. On page 346, fourth paragraph, one of the characters performs a heroic sacrifice that results in what amounts to a micro-nuke explosion. In the fifth paragraph, the echoes are fading. In the sixth, our hero says it's over. AND IN THE NEXT ^#$%$%$ PARAGRAPH, ON THE SAME PAGE character X makes moon eyes at our hero and asks if they can retire together. Before the next page is over, he's proposed and the book's done. What the xxxx, Drake, did you run out of paper?

In the end, this is a slapped-together plot that feels as if it was made up from nouns and verbs drawn out of a hat. A good third of the book is outright violence porn, no doubt right in the wheelhouse of readers who play first-person-shooter games or have highly advanced Warcraft characters. And the ending is horribly rushed.

I gave one star for the vast amount of research Drake must have cobbled together, and one for his ability to write tight prose that paints clear pictures (sometimes too clear) of the action.

But really, this is pulp fiction. I suspect Drake's reaction to this would be a satisfied smile, because that's what he was aiming for.

[Neale Aslett]

A fun read, especially for those interested in 3rd century Rome

[Ozymandias]

Oh boy. This is a book with a lot of potential. The idea of an alien invasion trying to take over the world is a fun trope, but how unique is it to have such a thing set in the days of ancient Rome? Awesome. A band of elite Romans uncovering an alien conspiracy and working to take it down despite being massively outmatched in a one-on-one face-to-face fight due to superior tech and abilities, showing along the way how more primitive forces can take down even massively superior enemies by cunning and clever strategies. Cool sauce. And set at the height of the underknown third century crisis where emperors come and go with the life expectancy of mayflies. Bonus!

Except it doesn’t take long to figure out that’s not quite what we get. First of all, the alien vanguard is absurdly small: only five in total. They’re just there to safeguard the millions of eggs that are to overwhelm humanity in a year. Which puts a deadline on it that feels absurdly sudden and more than a little arbitrary. Secondly, in part due to the deadline, they don’t actually do anything clever. The plan is to charge straight into the enemy nest and take everyone out through fire. Third… they have help. Yup, future humans (or something related) come to the past to hire Roman soldiers to take care of the problem. They bring with them superpowers (or tech) of their own, which means that, again, clever solutions aren’t really necessary. They know exactly where to go and what they need to do. The only thing our hero needs to succeed is sheer bloodyminded determination and aggressive manliness to outfight his enemies. In short… ugh, every unnecessary cliché I hate about the pulp genre with none of the potential it needs.

The characters are not great. Our lead is the typical pulpy superman – a manly secret agent whose purpose in life is to preserve civilization against all who would destroy it, a task so worthy no sacrifice is too great (for others to suffer) and no act of violence the cause of nuance or question. He makes countless difficult decisions yet is always right and morally uncomplicated, even when abandoning his entire crew to their death so that he and a few friends can maybe escape. Helping him are his protégé, a random soldier openly planning to desert, said soldier’s mistress, and the mysterious helper from the future. The aliens are never really given a backstory or any personality and only one of them even gets dialogue. Future helper isn’t any better with exposition – they are deliberately vague about everything and never get asked some pretty obvious questions. They also come with superpowers, including the ability to influence minds and interfere with itchy trigger fingers from afar – powers that needlessly detract from the need for clever solutions. Needless to say, this undermines the importance of our protagonists, who really seem superfluous to the whole situation. Why bother coming up with something clever when you could just handwave some magic answer? Wouldn’t want to accidentally be interesting.

The other problem with having a future agent directing the plot is that the quest is far too clearcut. There is a specific cave in Cilicia that they need to reach to kill the enemy. Nothing that happens between Rome and that cave really matters to the plot… which is a problem because the book is 400 pages long. Right from the beginning we’ve got a lot of pointless padding. Hope you like your alien invasion arcs with lots of piracy! And what would a piracy subplot be without a lot of rape that has no serious consequences for any of our protagonists? There’s also an utterly bizarre (anti)Christian interlude involving human sacrifice. I was sure this had something to do with the aliens, but nope – just Christians. Infuriatingly for me, the early Christian community is more like some kind of pseudomedieval cult – a church with steeple, communal land, and all being carried out completely in the open despite Christian persecutions as recently as three years before. If you go to the Yale Art Gallery you can actually see a real third century church. It was small, beautifully painted, yet hidden away inside a larger building to avoid drawing attention to it.

The book also keeps introducing subplots that never go anywhere or mean anything. Our lead’s backstory includes a love interest he left behind in Gaul. She shows up as a POV character a few chapters in, immediately dies offscreen without him realizing it, and simply doesn’t matter again. Her son does show up at the end to avenge her death (you see, he blames them for using ray guns on her, despite his alien overlords having a monopoly on ray guns) but they never realize who he is and the whole subplot fizzled out. I was absolutely certain this was going somewhere (is he our lead's son perhaps) but no, none of it matters. Was there no editing here? Another subplot that does at least have a payout (however delayed) is that the time travel procedure that brought our companion also dragged in a whole bunch of dinosaurs. It’s a little random, but this is the one part of the book that actually does something with the time travel theme and even if the payoff takes a long time to appear it does give us a fun Allosaurus attack.

There is one additional problem here that is sort of unfair to mention but I’m going to anyway: I’ve seen it done better. And not by just anyone but by the same author. Yeah. David Drake teamed up with Eric Flint (Drake wrote the outline, Flint did the actual writing – which he’s better at) a few years later to write the Belisarius series. That series is a profoundly silly bunch of books set about three centuries later and based around Justinian’s famous general Belisarius, who in our world reconquered Italy and Africa for Rome at ruinous expense but in that universe is the greatest general of all time who (with the aid of a sentient crystal) musters all the forces of Rome and its allies to face the obliterating forces of a unified India led by a supercomputer. It’s one of my favorite guilty pleasures. Go read it.

It is clear in retrospect that Drake himself recognized there was something lacking in Birds of Prey and to his credit he learned from his mistakes to get it right on his second try. He clearly realized partway through this book that large elements simply did not work and strove to utilize them correctly next time. And the key mistake being rectified is the use of helpers from the future. There is actually a reason for it in Belisarius! This is an epic battle between good and evil fought on a massive scale with millions of people. While the helper brings some personal improvements in stamina and strength, the main thing it brings is knowledge – which the enemy computers also have access to – so this story quickly becomes a race to retrofit modern equipment and organizations into an ancient setting. That fits Drake’s interests and strengths much better than the current book.

I would not recommend this book. It has some good moments, but on the whole it is just a very basic story padded out into book length. The one interesting idea is ill-used, with a future helper with magic powers making the quest both easier than it needs to be and less involving. If the plot or tone sound interesting to you, read the Belisarius series instead. It does what this book tried to do only better.

[William Bentrim]

Birds of Prey by David Drake

In 262 A. D. the Roman empire was faltering. One prop on the tottering empire was Aulus Perrenius, Imperial Agent. Aulus could be characterized as a very early James Bond working for the Empire and not necessarily for the specific emperor. Aulus is introduced to Calvus, who unknown to him initially was also an agent working for a different time. Together the two must protect Aulus's empire and time as well as saving Calvus's future time.

Drake always does a superb job with historically accurate settings and characters. His story telling could be done around a campfire or a nuclear pile. The man has game! His stories always provide some philosophic head scratching as well as plenty of action and character insights.

I really enjoy his work in general and this book specifically.

I recommend both this book.

Site: http://david-drake.com/

[Jack]

Actually I was disappointed. I have come to really enjoy David Drake's books and stories, but this one didn't make the grade.

Story idea sounded great: Rome 262AD, an Imperial Agent is hunting down aliens. The book starts out strong, exciting, fast paced. The action moves from Rome to Tarsus in southern Turkey. Along the way there is a sea battle with pirates, a short stop to visit some very deranged Christians and a battle with a dragon. All of it exciting and well written.

The problem is - all that takes up more than 85% of the book. Drake seems to hurry through the final section about the confrontation with the aliens. You're looking at the last 40 pages of a 343 page book. After all of the build up for 300 pages, there seems to be this rush to end the story.

Details and character develop again get high marks but the ending left me flat.

[Neil]

What's there to say about this book? Extinct animals ripped from time showing up throughout the book, Germanic pirates, gang-rape, clever poison deaths, a cult of cannibalistic 'Christians' who live in conjunction with a cult of snake-worshiping 'Christians', alien invaders, 'time travel', and bragging about bestiality - all to be found in the 'last days' of the crumbling Roman Empire in the Third Century.

Can't say I cared for this one too much. It was a weird read; the pacing was kinda odd. It almost could have been a bit longer, or some of the middle cut out and rewritten so the ending could have been . . . different. It seemed fairly anticlimactic, to me. Plus, I didn't care for the described bestiality toward the end. It seemed a bit much, even for David Drake.

The basic gist of the book is that there is some kind of agent who gets the job done, no matter what, in the most expedient way possible. He is called back to Rome to receive an assignment 'for the good of the Empire.' The person he is to be working with is enormously tall [6 feet 4 inches] and incredibly strong despite not having much muscle mass. He has to acquire a boat to sail to Turkey [for some reason I had the impression he was sailing to Africa across the Med; not sure why I had that idea] to accomplish his mission. He has a trusted junior agent who is his traveling companion and protege; he also acquires three or four other Centurions to act as his 'red shirt' companions. They encounter various groups that attempt to stymie their efforts, to no avail. In the end, Roman civilization is saved for a bit longer as is the future once the threatened alien invasion is over.

Longer plot discussion: Aulus, Calvus [the 'man' to whom he is assigned to work], and Gaias are ambushed in an alley after Aulus is given his orders to work with Calvus. During the ambush, Aulus encounters one of the alien invaders, to his horror. The creature is killed, but not before some of the Roman red shirts are killed. The ambushers are all Gallic and followers of the creature. Aulus learns there are five more creatures [Guardians] that need to die for humanity to be saved.

After the ambush, Aulus realizes he needs to move fast, so he attempts to hire a vessel to take him and his party to where he needs to go. He also requests a party of 100 Marines to accompany him; instead, he receives 20 former slaves pressed into service and taught the rudiments of warfare. There are no sea-worthy vessels available, so precious time is lost in restoring one of the vessel's condition. One of the Centurions, Sestius, is overly protective of his companion, which leads Aulus to discover his 'friend' is actually a woman and his lover. She plans to stay with Sestius to the end of the mission and then start a farm with him once he defects from the Roman army.

As they are sailing along, they encounter an extinct aquatic dinosaur. Calvus has special powers, some of which were revealed when the first alien 'Guardian' was encountered and killed, and uses these powers to keep the crew calm upon encountering this mythical creature. A few days or so later, they are attacked by two pirate vessels. The pirate ships split apart and the first vessel is heavily damaged in the attack. Aulus recognizes they will be unlikely to survive the second vessel and, upon discovering they are not 'too far' from land, decides to ram the second vessel. He convinces the captain Leonidas this is their only chance for survival and they turn to face the oncoming pirate vessel. At the last minute, the captain of the now-overloaded pirate vessel [having picked up the healthiest survivors from the first vessel] realizes the Roman cargo vessel is indeed going to ram them and tries to turn away. [I call it a cargo vessel because of how it is described, despite having once had a ram at its prow; it might be a war vessel.] No such luck. The Roman ship is twice the size of the German ship and drives it under the water, sinking it and killing all onboard. However, the cargo vessel is mortally wounded in the collision and Aulus realizes this. Deceiving the captain, he takes his surviving companions with him into the sea in hopes they can use a wooden grate to help them swim to shore. The crew is left behind in the doomed vessel; there will be no survivors. Aulus is sick at leaving the crew behind to die, but the mission comes first and he has no way to save them.

They swim all night and through the next day. It is hard work, and Aulus' injuries make his efforts torturous in nature. They do not realize how close they are to the shore; Gaius calls out in fear to a nearby vessel in the middle of the night. Aulus has already realized it must be the surviving pirate vessel; he is ready to kill his protege when he realizes the damage has already been done and the crew members of the boat have already heard Gaius' cries. He and his party are taken captive by the Germans and brought to shore after being knocked unconscious.

When Aulus awakens, he discovers Calvus is actually a woman and that both women have been brutally gang-raped by the pirates. He attempts to barter for their lives with the leader of the pirate crew, to no avail. His attempts at bartering are interrupted when the crew turns on itself, murdering the surviving Herulian crewmembers for some kind of perceived slight. The next day, Sabellia [one of the women] convinces the Germans to let her cook them a meal that will be much more satisfying than the pathetic meal they had eaten the night before. She leads the pirates on, having them walk with her as she convinces them to collect various food items for the meal. Then, after the pirates consume the meal, they become violently sick from having eaten poisoned food. She frees Aulus and the two of them kill every pirate before freeing the others. They arm themselves with weapons from the pirates supplies and take as much food, water, and money as they can carry.

Their next 'trial' involves a bizarre union of two cults that claim to be Christian but act nothing like Christians. The larger cult is composed of cannibals and the smaller cult is allowed to live only because the surviving members were former soldiers and can provide protection for the larger, somewhat-pacifistic cult. They poison Aulus and his crew, who observe another Christian traveler being prepared for larder as they slowly pass out. When Aulus and his party come to, they find themselves in a prison. The Ophitic cult members are two brothers who alternate guarding prisoners and guarding the valley. The brother guarding them brags about his sexual prowess with donkeys; Calvus mocks and antagonizes the guard so much that the guard lashes out at the cell 'door' and is captured by the prisoners. He has nothing they can use to break the cell bars, but he convinces them to let him live long enough for his brother to show up as they alternate shifts. He will have a sword they can use to break out. He ends up killing his own brother, and then one of the Centurions kills him after they break out of the cell. Aulus and Calvus end up lighting a large cart filled with hay on fire and shove it toward the 'church' where the cannibals are feasting inside; the goal is to kill everyone inside with the fire. The door opens just as the wagon/cart is to slam into the doors; the burning hay is spilled inside the 'church' tower. And the sick citizenry die a horrible death inside from fire [and Aulus hopes it is a mere foretaste of the eternal torment to come for their actions, if such damnation does exist].

The crew is now down to five members: Aulus, Gaius, Calvus, Sestius [a Centurion who has already told Aulus he intends to desert from the army once this mission is over and settle down with Sabellia], and Sabellia. They follow the same format as they did with the pirate plunder: they arm themselves with weapons from the cache in the village and take up as much money, supplies, and water/wine as they and their newly-acquired donkeys can carry. At the next town, they discover a dragon lives nearby the endpoint of their quest and has been terrorizing the countryside. They set out for this final leg of their journey; Aulus does not believe a dragon truly exists. He believes it is the work of the Guardians scaring people away from the sink hole in which they have made their nest. While in Tarsus, he and his party observe more extinct creatures captured to die in the games during a parade put on by the military governor. These creatures reaffirms Calvus' belief that her coming back to the past in pursuit of the 'Guardians' has pulled other creatures from their time and deposited them into the 'present' time of 262 AD; she expresses her fears to Aulus, who does not quite dismiss them but believes they are irrelevant to their overall mission.

After resting and acquiring new supplies, they press on to the interior past Tarsus to the sinkholes in question. They are outside a walled chateau/village when the dragon attacks. The creature chases them into the chateau, but they are able to shut the doors/gates before it can enter. Inside, they encounter three other individuals who have familiar accents. The groups size each other up as they 'pair off' and discuss what has transpired in the region. The leader of the three men claims they are all that survives of the militia of the townspeople [who have fled because of the voracity and ferocity of the 'dragon']. As Aulus is speaking with the leader, he overhears Gaius asking if they are not the same group of men Aulus' group had encountered in Rome [referring to the ambush]. The two groups fight a short, nasty fight and Sestius dies. Aulus is furious and ready to kill his protege, but Gaius' admission of his mistake and distress/guilt over what has happened stays Aulus' hand. Aulus accuses Calvus of messing with his mind to prevent another death, but Calvus points out that Aulus killed people for lying to him and denying their mistakes; Gaius admitted his mistake and confessed to his error in judgement, thereby saving his life. The saddest point of the whole mess is when they question the dying survivor; he admits they were fleeing the Guardians and wanted to leave the region when the dragon surprised them and attacked them. They would gladly have assisted Aulus in his quest as much as they could had they been given a chance upon learning what Aulus mission was.

That night, Sabellia shags Aulus. He momentarily wonders if her former [and now dead] lover Sestius had the same send-off the night before he died, but her naked breast serves as enough of a distraction for Aulus to forget about Sestius' death as he gives himself to her.

The next day, Aulus and Gaius rearm themselves as best they can with the remaining weapons. The women are left behind because there are not enough horses available for all of them to travel together and the donkeys will never be fast enough to outrun the dragon [Calvus tells Aulus it is an allosaurus]. The women are unhappy with this, but there is little they can do. The men wait until the allosaurus has moved to the north before they head south. While watering the horses at a creek, Aulus remembers his discussion with the Gallic leader before everything went south - he said the fourth member of their party was killed after the allosaurus surprised them at a stream while watering their horses. He turns around to see the beast stalking them and screams for Gaius to ride. The beast chases them to the sinkhole that is their destination, following Gaius over the rim. Gaius kills a Guardian at the edge of the sinkhole; the creature lets loose with an energy blast that is dispersed by Gaius' sword. The shock at seeing its weapon fail causes the creature to freeze, allowing Gaius to kill it. Then he charges three more Guardians with the Allosaurus close behind. Before he can reach the next group, he is shot by all three creatures and unhorsed, tumbling to the bottom of the sinkhole. The allosaurus kills two more Guardians before it is in turn killed. Aulus is distraught over the loss of his friend, companion, protege, and charge. He manages to kill the fourth Guardian due to it not having recovered from the Allosaurus' attack. Calvus appears, telling him they saw the beast discover their southward tracks and watched in horror as it started tracking them, so the women followed the beast in hopes they could either distract it or dispatch it before it killed the men.

There is one final obstacle that must be faced, a giant Gall who believes Aulus has personally killed his mother. Sabellia tries to sneak up on the Gall but falling stones betray her and the giant knocks her out. Finally sick of the death he has wrought and seen, especially on this voyage, he decides to let the giant live after knocking him unconscious during the fight. He is grateful for what Sabellia did while feeling sick to his stomach once he realized the depth of his feelings for this woman.

Calvus heals Aulus as much as she can before helping him reach Gaius' body. Calvus then heals Gaius, much to Aulus' relief. She then provides Aulus with the necessary light to be able to find the last Guardian. Aulus heads deep into the sinkhole before encountering a barrier. Calvus appears and helps him through the barrier. The last Guardian is inside the nest and is quickly slain by Aulus. Calvus kisses Aulus and tells him to leave as there is not much time. On the way out of the sinkhole, Aulus encounters Sabellia and she helps him escape just before an enormous blast destroys the sinkhole and kills everything inside the nest. The tale ends with Aulus deciding he's 'too old for this s--t' and deciding maybe he'd take an administrative job after all. Sabellia consents to marrying him, and they live happily ever after [or so we assume].

I really liked his book 'killer', so I would have thought I would have enjoyed this book more. Aliens and the Roman Empire! What's not to love? I must say, this book was a real disappointment to me. It was good in parts, really good in other parts, and really boring in between the 'good parts' and 'really good parts.' The best 'scene' in the book was when Sabellia uses her body and her skills as a cook to deceive and 'seduce' the Germanic pirates into letting her cook a poisoned meal for them before she kills them. That was crazy! It was like the book built up to this huge [potential] climax, what with the 'journey' the heroes had to take before their quest was over. And then the book was over! Bam! Bam! Bam! . . . . Bam! Well, not quite at that point [there was one more Guardian to kill and a nest to destroy], but it was very anticlimactic. I guess that was okay, as it was totally unexpected. But still. I felt like I was horribly let down at the end of the book. Like slogging through the boring crap was a wasted effort. I did not really care for the characters in the book; I found myself trying to guess which members of the party would die and at what time. I knew one of the deaths was going to be totally obvious, which it was. Total 'Red Shirt' death.

I was very disappointed with this one. Once I was done reading it, I felt like 'that's it?' It truly felt like a waste of my time reading this novel, and I hate that in a book. Maybe if I ever read it again, I'll have a different opinion and revise this review. But then again, I have no desire to read about a guy describing and bragging about having sex with a donkey, so I doubt I'll ever read this one again.

[Roger]

Even a hell for leather climax could not save Birds of Prey. David Drake is a good writer, and the concept of this novel (Roman military discipline versus an alien invasion) is fascinating. I think somehow Drake found he could not quite get from concept to finished product. Part of the problem: it is obvious Drake did his research where Ancient Rome is concerned. However none of that translated to excitement. And except for the first and last parts of the book, we are treated to what amounts to a travelogue and series of adventures which really had little or nothing to do with the mission at hand. It felt a lot like filler, honestly, and that was a lot of filler. In other words this book really did not deliver quite what it promised. I've read and enjoyed other things Drake has written, and certainly will not swear off this author, but it will be a while before I pick up anything else by him.

[TammyJo Eckhart]

This is a fast-paced, heavily descriptive, and mildly misogynistic cross-genre novel that keeps you engaged. So why only give it three stars? The promised focus – aliens or something like them must be fought against by a Roman spy and his partner in the 3rd century – disappears for the bulk of the book. Sure, the challenges they encountered along the journey were interesting but I kept wanting the book to get to the main event. Instead, by the time the book gets us to the showdown, it felt rushed to me. Add into that what I felt was an unrealistic rape scenario (yup, you've been warned) and its results, and I had to deduct a couple of stars.

[Emma]

I have read many David Drake books and really enjoyed them. However, this early work of his was somewhat disappointing. We get a great lead up to the end and then everything is over in 20 pages. I even checked that it was only one book and not part of a series as I got to the end and we hadn't met up when the main "baddie" yet.

[Ron]

Take a Roman secret agent, toss in aliens and the occasional dinosaur and you get a sense of the milieu that David Drake has created in Birds of Prey. One man stands against the tide and does what he can to keep his world alive.

[Craig]

This is one of Drake's earlier examinations of the Roman Empire, set in an alternate 3rd century complete with pirates and an alien invasion and plenty of action, intrigue, and adventure. It's a well written and carefully researched treat for history buffs as well as for sf fans.

[hCharles Obert]

David Drake is among my favorite story tellers, especially when working in the 'alternate history' genre ... this story provides an interesting concept but (to me) it felt forced, less fluid than others.

[Leigh]

I read this book years ago and it definitely made an impression. I’ve rated similar books lower but this one gets 4 stars because it’s absolutely balls to the walls insane. Sometimes you need a little chaos and it’s ok that nothing makes sense.

Major trigger warning for rape.

[Nicole Hartwell]

Worst book ever.

[Tony]

Riveting

Great Book. Another Epic Work by David Drake. Needs a sequel!! Enjoyed the plot and the unexpected twists. Definitely worth a read .

[Mark Bates]

Reads like an R rated B movie with a confusing ending.

[Patrick O'Hannigan]

I did not see one of the twists in this historical adventure yarn coming. It's a solid story, with more psychological depth than I had expected.

[AJS]

More like 2 1/2. Not one of his best though had a pretty good plot opening and opportunity. Never seemed to branch out and fully engage on the more interesting SciFi/Fantasy elements.

[James Burke]

Ehhh... It was ok. The book was supposed to be about aliens and Romans. The problem is that the author spent 300 pages of a 350 page book just getting to the aliens. Most of the book was spent dealing with pirates and angry villagers. He also never explained where they came from, why they were there etc... The only reason for two stars is because the concept of Romans and aliens is cool..... Even if the author did mess it up.

[Nicholas]

Decent enough book. Pretty solidly in the Men's Adventure Fiction genre, with a slight twist. Protagonist is skilled, but not uber, that was nice. Not a whole lot of characterization for anyone though.

[Bill]

This is Drake's best, at least as good as the Belisarius series.

[Paul]

A good, fast-paced read. Not sure why it's called Birds of Prey though... or why there's a rifle in the cover design

[Jim Bisso]

Not a bad aliens invading Earth as the Western Roman Empire declines book.