I’m glad I decided to try this unusual setting and storyline. It wasn’t a perfect read, but it was very entertaining. And I did like the setting. I watched a bit of Spartacus – God’s of the Arena until I blushed so hard and it was an interesting time period. I also watched a bit of the series Rome, but not that much.
Aurora had herself a good job flying the muckety mucks around in her air force jet before she flew into a sand storm one evening over the Iraqi desert. Her plane crashes and her team member is hurt. She is discovered by a dude in a leather breast plate and skirt – I’m thinking think Brad Pitt in Troy for a nice visual. For a while she thinks he and his men are some kind of desert tribe, but she can’t be sure and they don’t have a common language. This dude and his men take her back to a small desert city, bring in a scholar and Aurora slowly begins to realize she’s not in Kansas anymore. Instead she has been transported back when Rome ruled the universe and the skirt dude was, in fact, a Roman general in charge of the city.
As you can imagine there is quite the culture clash. Aurora is a woman raised and living in 2003 who’s met her match with a commander of the
Roman Army who is used to command and used to owning slaves and used to getting his own way and used to women being of lesser importance. So one can imagine the clashes between the two.
Often I get cranky with this kind conflict – they hero being a ‘know it all, me Tarzan, you Jane’ type attitude and the heroine being kind of a ball busting bitch. But it worked with this book for me. I think in part Lucius didn’t hold negative views per se; he was a product of his time. He was autocratic because he was a commander and that was what he HAD to be. He didn’t hold a lot of respect for women because that’s the way it was. He didn’t hold them in disrespect, it was more that women held very few position of power. When Jane got carried away in a fit of imperiousness, she really did need to be punished according to the times, but Lucius recognized that there was something very different about Aurora and despite getting frustrated with her lack of respect, he did get kind of a kick out of her nerve. And of course once he started getting a kick out of her, he started developing deeper and deeper feelings for her; to the point where he takes her punishment as his own. Gotta love a hero who will do that for his heroine.
So, in conclusion, I quite enjoyed this rather unique storyline. I check out Kindle to see if she wrote any more along this line but I didn’t see any. Though I think I will check and see if I can find any more books set in Ancient Rome – all suggestions welcome