Ozymandias's Reviews > Hunting the Eagles

The second book in the Eagles of the Empire series (a poor choice of names, even if it is fitting, as it’s far too easy to confuse it with Scarrow’s Eagle series) this book continues on from where the last one left off. When last we saw them, Tullus and his band had barely escaped with their lives from the massacre in the Teutoburg Forest that took out three whole legions. Well after four years of waiting things are finally stirring into motion as the vast apparatus of the Roman state prepares itself for revenge. And Tullus is at the center of it. Determined to recover the Eighteenth’s eagle, he’s enthusiastically leading his men into combat.

That makes it sound rather like a revenge story, and that’s pretty much what I was expecting: Tullus having to choose between protecting his men and recovering his eagle. Well it’s not that. Rather, this is a pretty straightforward campaign narrative. There’s surprisingly little invented here. Rather the core of the campaign is developed into a complete story. We get to see the mutiny (treated in all its horror, even if Tullus is perhaps too close to the situation to offer great insight) and the following campaign of annihilation culminating in the battle of the bridges.

While I think this is great stuff and well overdue for novelization, tying everything to real events does come at a cost: the book lacks a conventional narrative structure. Whether that bothers you will depend on whether you’re keen on that structure. Some people will undoubtedly prefer a book that’s big on recurring action scenes and light on overarching plot. And still others will recognize the absence of any real character resolution or change in situation as a common problem of the middle book in trilogies. For myself, much as I enjoyed the battle of the bridges, I felt the plot seemed less consequential than the first book. An admittedly hard act to follow.

This is the sort of campaign narrative you might have gotten from a retired centurion penning his memoirs, if such a thing had existed. It feels real and authentic. The character drama is strictly secondary to events, but the characters are pretty well fleshed out nonetheless. Battle scenes are stupendously realistic and very intense. The fog of war is strong, but even if our scope is narrow we never feel as if the conflict makes no sense. It’s merely that our characters don’t see it.

I really enjoyed the book, although it’s no major criticism to say I thought the first one was better. Tullus is still an entertaining character, as are the others, and you care enough about them to keep on. The battle scenes are great, and the level of accuracy really makes you feel that you’re witnessing that world. I appreciated that Tullus didn’t pull a Forrest Gump and appear everywhere of importance. Although he was certainly in most of the places where interesting things happened. A strong sequel, paving a clear path to the sequel.