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igenlodeThis is... pretty good for a self-published book, but it does look and feel indefinably like a self-published book. (After finishing it I looked up "Godstow Press", and it is indeed owned by the author, which confirmed the impression I'd had from the moment I first picked it up. )
The protagonist, Togidubnus, is a man caught between two cultures, the son of a British client king who was sent off in childhood to be brought up in Rome as a hostage with the promise that he would become a proper Roman citizen. Conveniently for the historical narrative he rubs shoulders with Seneca, Claudius and Vespasian, beds Messalina (about whom the author appears uncertain whether she ought to be revisionist or not) and is then sent back to Britain with the mission to persuade the local rulers to surrender to Claudius' intended invasion without a fight. He has before him the example of Vespasian, who comes from thoroughly Romanised Iberian stock, and the dubious example of his Gaullish grandfather, who may or may not have betrayed both sides according to whose bards you listen to.
The theme of the book is very much of things being divided into two halves - opposing schools of druid rites, kingdoms split between brothers, design based on straight lines and on curves -- and Togidubnus himself evidently personifies that, especially since it is revealed that he is not only half Roman and half Briton by upbringing but previously descended from two rival cultures by birth, after his father forcibly abducted his mother from a sacred shrine. Brought up by his mother and her women, the boy's sympathies as a child clearly lie on her side (as do those of the narrative), and when he meets his father again in Rome as an ailing deposed barbarian king, he finds himself ashamed of the old man as well as trapped in an uneasy hostility with him. Ultimately we are told that Verica despite everything loved both his wife and son, and that he was trying to goad the young man into killing him with the intention of making the ritual sacrifice of the king's life for the good of his people, but while this is a familiar trope (Mary Renault, Rosemary Sutcliff) it doesn't really have much emotional impact here. Togidubnus has little love for the man who fathered him and little time to spare for his point of view, so the belated claim of affection carries no resonance.
There are definitely strong echoes of Rosemary Sutcliff here (the protagonist's relationship with the British-born slave from a rival tribe whom he eventually frees recalls both the brotherhood of Marcus and Esca in "The Eagle of the Ninth" and of Gwydion and Math in Henry Treece's "Legions of the Eagle"), and of Mary Stewart's Arthurian Dark Ages novels in her writings about druids and magic. Unfortunately the book doesn't quite live up to its precursors, either in evocation of the natural landscape or of the bonds between characters and conflicts of loyalty.
Togidubnus wanders around without much clear sense of purpose (the book actually draws our attention to this, suggesting that it is deliberately contrived by outside forces, but in practice the plot feels simply shapeless), and while he sees himself as a peacemaker he manages to bring death and chaos wherever he goes -- something to which the narrative also draws our attention, but without any real creation of angst. I wasn't all that convinced by his vacillations between his 'Roman' and 'British' sides, and the message of "just surrender now and it will all be for the best" is a hard one to put across convincingly at the best of times; unsurprisingly, as we know from history, it doesn't work out too well, and the Romans fight, burn, rape and enslave their way to conquest anyway (as do the various native tribes in their internecine conflicts, the ending of which is supposed to be Togidubnus' dream). It's very difficult to write a novel where the protagonist is in effect a quisling profiting by an invading force, and I felt the book was trying to have it both ways and not entirely succeeding. Sutcliff did culture clash and conflicting loyalties brilliantly, and comparisons are inevitable.
One thing that really jarred for me was the sudden admiring mention of Christianity towards the end of the text ("Some great sacrifice has been made, of a man. That is all I know. But do not expect too much of the old gods. Their day is over." ...veils were parting to reveal another Spirit that, like no god before it, had love as its substance). Robert Graves brings the coincidence of timing off beautifully in "I, Claudius" by referring to the legend of the Messiah in the context of the contemporary Jewish rebellion, but putting this as some kind of supernatural revelation in the mouth of a far-distant British druid felt like special pleading.
I enjoyed the beginning of the book and was won over by the description of the protagonist struggling to live up to the precepts of his teacher's Stoic philosophy, and by the vivid descriptions of life in Rome (although I did raise an eyebrow when the young man not only lives with Claudius and his mother, but just happens to befriend another future Emperor as well, out of all the soldiers he could possibly have encountered...) And I enjoyed and was engaged by the unexpected arrival of Verica in Rome, and the cultural conflicts and uneasy personal relationship between Togidubnus and his father that arise as a result and during their travels together. Katuaros as his foster-brother is a great character as well -- and clearly a much more obvious candidate for the throne than the exiled and less charismatic Togidubnus, which doesn't threaten their old friendship as Togidubnus doesn't particularly want to succeed his father as ruler of the Atrebates.
I think the story started to lose its grip on my attention when the protagonist begins his wanderings after old Verica's death (although, as mentioned above, that episode didn't carry the power that it probably should have done). The depiction of Caractacus/Caractos is compelling, and you can see why he would be an inspiring leader and yet an opponent never to be trusted; in hindsight I think that a book focusing around direct conflict between the Romanised Togidubnus and his proudly anti-Roman tribal enemy, with the invasion helping to serve as a proxy for the existing inherited conflict between them, might have made for a stronger narrative. Instead we get the whole druid strand and its semi-mystical goings-on, and again those didn't really work for me with the vivid belief evoked, say, by Mary Stewart or Elizabeth Goudge.
And then, having allied himself thoroughly with the interests of the druid faction and the spirits of land and water, Togidubnus arbitrarily finds himself dropped back by the plot into the Roman camp, after a rather cursory assassination of his friend's father takes place -- again, this is a bit lacking in terms of emotional impact, and the story is starting to feel like one thing after another.
This is fairly uninspiring dialogue in a book that is now hastening to polish off the actual Roman conquest after four hundred pages or so of preamble.
Togidubnus duly gets his throne after the fighting is done with -- somewhat surprisingly, as he has never shown much aptitude or desire for it, and he has spent hardly any time among his supposed subjects - and Boudicca and other chieftains are suddenly introduced, presumably in set-up for a sequel in which he goes off to rescue his child-bride from Messalina and the Iceni rebellion takes place. But I'm afraid that I wasn't inspired to read any more books in the series.
At a hefty 470 pages -- circa 150,000 words, at a guess -- I felt that overall "Chariot of the Soul" didn't really justify its length, and a commercial editor might well have tightened it up and pulled it together better.
The protagonist, Togidubnus, is a man caught between two cultures, the son of a British client king who was sent off in childhood to be brought up in Rome as a hostage with the promise that he would become a proper Roman citizen. Conveniently for the historical narrative he rubs shoulders with Seneca, Claudius and Vespasian, beds Messalina (about whom the author appears uncertain whether she ought to be revisionist or not) and is then sent back to Britain with the mission to persuade the local rulers to surrender to Claudius' intended invasion without a fight. He has before him the example of Vespasian, who comes from thoroughly Romanised Iberian stock, and the dubious example of his Gaullish grandfather, who may or may not have betrayed both sides according to whose bards you listen to.
The theme of the book is very much of things being divided into two halves - opposing schools of druid rites, kingdoms split between brothers, design based on straight lines and on curves -- and Togidubnus himself evidently personifies that, especially since it is revealed that he is not only half Roman and half Briton by upbringing but previously descended from two rival cultures by birth, after his father forcibly abducted his mother from a sacred shrine. Brought up by his mother and her women, the boy's sympathies as a child clearly lie on her side (as do those of the narrative), and when he meets his father again in Rome as an ailing deposed barbarian king, he finds himself ashamed of the old man as well as trapped in an uneasy hostility with him. Ultimately we are told that Verica despite everything loved both his wife and son, and that he was trying to goad the young man into killing him with the intention of making the ritual sacrifice of the king's life for the good of his people, but while this is a familiar trope (Mary Renault, Rosemary Sutcliff) it doesn't really have much emotional impact here. Togidubnus has little love for the man who fathered him and little time to spare for his point of view, so the belated claim of affection carries no resonance.
There are definitely strong echoes of Rosemary Sutcliff here (the protagonist's relationship with the British-born slave from a rival tribe whom he eventually frees recalls both the brotherhood of Marcus and Esca in "The Eagle of the Ninth" and of Gwydion and Math in Henry Treece's "Legions of the Eagle"), and of Mary Stewart's Arthurian Dark Ages novels in her writings about druids and magic. Unfortunately the book doesn't quite live up to its precursors, either in evocation of the natural landscape or of the bonds between characters and conflicts of loyalty.
Togidubnus wanders around without much clear sense of purpose (the book actually draws our attention to this, suggesting that it is deliberately contrived by outside forces, but in practice the plot feels simply shapeless), and while he sees himself as a peacemaker he manages to bring death and chaos wherever he goes -- something to which the narrative also draws our attention, but without any real creation of angst. I wasn't all that convinced by his vacillations between his 'Roman' and 'British' sides, and the message of "just surrender now and it will all be for the best" is a hard one to put across convincingly at the best of times; unsurprisingly, as we know from history, it doesn't work out too well, and the Romans fight, burn, rape and enslave their way to conquest anyway (as do the various native tribes in their internecine conflicts, the ending of which is supposed to be Togidubnus' dream). It's very difficult to write a novel where the protagonist is in effect a quisling profiting by an invading force, and I felt the book was trying to have it both ways and not entirely succeeding. Sutcliff did culture clash and conflicting loyalties brilliantly, and comparisons are inevitable.
One thing that really jarred for me was the sudden admiring mention of Christianity towards the end of the text ("Some great sacrifice has been made, of a man. That is all I know. But do not expect too much of the old gods. Their day is over." ...veils were parting to reveal another Spirit that, like no god before it, had love as its substance). Robert Graves brings the coincidence of timing off beautifully in "I, Claudius" by referring to the legend of the Messiah in the context of the contemporary Jewish rebellion, but putting this as some kind of supernatural revelation in the mouth of a far-distant British druid felt like special pleading.
I enjoyed the beginning of the book and was won over by the description of the protagonist struggling to live up to the precepts of his teacher's Stoic philosophy, and by the vivid descriptions of life in Rome (although I did raise an eyebrow when the young man not only lives with Claudius and his mother, but just happens to befriend another future Emperor as well, out of all the soldiers he could possibly have encountered...) And I enjoyed and was engaged by the unexpected arrival of Verica in Rome, and the cultural conflicts and uneasy personal relationship between Togidubnus and his father that arise as a result and during their travels together. Katuaros as his foster-brother is a great character as well -- and clearly a much more obvious candidate for the throne than the exiled and less charismatic Togidubnus, which doesn't threaten their old friendship as Togidubnus doesn't particularly want to succeed his father as ruler of the Atrebates.
I think the story started to lose its grip on my attention when the protagonist begins his wanderings after old Verica's death (although, as mentioned above, that episode didn't carry the power that it probably should have done). The depiction of Caractacus/Caractos is compelling, and you can see why he would be an inspiring leader and yet an opponent never to be trusted; in hindsight I think that a book focusing around direct conflict between the Romanised Togidubnus and his proudly anti-Roman tribal enemy, with the invasion helping to serve as a proxy for the existing inherited conflict between them, might have made for a stronger narrative. Instead we get the whole druid strand and its semi-mystical goings-on, and again those didn't really work for me with the vivid belief evoked, say, by Mary Stewart or Elizabeth Goudge.
And then, having allied himself thoroughly with the interests of the druid faction and the spirits of land and water, Togidubnus arbitrarily finds himself dropped back by the plot into the Roman camp, after a rather cursory assassination of his friend's father takes place -- again, this is a bit lacking in terms of emotional impact, and the story is starting to feel like one thing after another.
I introduced Apnodens as head of a bardic college and son of Archdruid Regalis, recently murdered.
'Murdered? The archdruid?'
'At the midsummer gathering Regalis was advocating peace with the Romans, but he had opponents who prefer war.'
'How many opponents?'
'Just a few,' I said hurriedly, not wishing to give him the impression that almost all druids were his enemy.
This is fairly uninspiring dialogue in a book that is now hastening to polish off the actual Roman conquest after four hundred pages or so of preamble.
Togidubnus duly gets his throne after the fighting is done with -- somewhat surprisingly, as he has never shown much aptitude or desire for it, and he has spent hardly any time among his supposed subjects - and Boudicca and other chieftains are suddenly introduced, presumably in set-up for a sequel in which he goes off to rescue his child-bride from Messalina and the Iceni rebellion takes place. But I'm afraid that I wasn't inspired to read any more books in the series.
At a hefty 470 pages -- circa 150,000 words, at a guess -- I felt that overall "Chariot of the Soul" didn't really justify its length, and a commercial editor might well have tightened it up and pulled it together better.