It's not an easy task, to take a man's story so frequently told, and make it into something that feels new and fresh. Alex Gough has done that with this book though.
Mark Antony, one of the most famous men in the dying years of the Republic, is a fascinating character. Bold and brilliant, fearless and sometimes rash, he was a general that stood at the shoulder of the great Caesar himself, before pushing for ultimate power after his death.
This book comes before all that, Caesar a mere footnote. In this book we see a young Antony, growing up on the streets of Rome. He is everything you expect him to be. A bit of drunken lout, a womaniser and a troublemaker. What I had not realised before reading this was the heartache he must have gone through as a young man. His father dead, then his step-father caught up in a treasonous plot, murdered at the hands on the Senate.
We see real growth in Antony. From the streetwise teenager to the battle scarred general, as Antony goes east in search of glory. There are many battles in this book, each different to the last, and in every one we see Antony int he thick of the fighting, a place I think he would have relished.
Even knowing what will happen in later books, the path the infamous rogue is set to tread, I'm really looking forward to seeing how his life is unfurled in the rest of this series. It was after all, a life that lives long through the ages.
