Forgotten Books: Casca #2: God of Death - Barry Sadler

Almost a year ago, I read the first book in the Casca series by Barry Sadler and really enjoyed it. I didn’t mean for so much time to go by before I got back to the series, but that’s the way it happened. I’ve finally read the second book, GOD OF DEATH, which picks up the story of Casca Rufio Longinus, former Roman soldier who was present at the Crucifixion and was cursed with immortality because of it. Wounds or illness that would kill a normal man can’t claim him, and he’s doomed to wander the world, always making his way as a mercenary soldier.

As in the first book, this one opens with a framing sequence in which Casca talks to the sympathetic doctor who discovered his secret. The story begins some 250 years after Casca is cursed. He falls in with a group of Vikings and becomes their leader (because nobody is a better fighter than Casca, of course), but eventually he tires of this and decides to sail off with some of his Viking friends and seek adventure. Where do they wind up? In what’s now Mexico, where he’s taken prisoner by Teotec warriors and brought to their capital city. Casca is surprised to find such a huge civilization in this land that was previously unknown to him, and even more surprised when he figures out that they intend to sacrifice him, to rip his still beating heart out of his chest on an altar atop one of their mighty pyramids. Casca doesn’t care for this idea, naturally, so he decides the best way to stop it is to convince his captors that he’s the living embodiment of their god of death.

From what I gather, long-time fans of the series have a mixed reaction to this book. Some consider it a favorite while others didn’t care for it. While I think it’s worth reading, I didn’t enjoy it as much as I did the first book. Especially in its first half, GOD OF DEATH is slower paced and the plot just sort of meanders around. Sadler summarizes the action more than describes it, tossing away in a few paragraphs storylines that might have made compelling novels in their own right. The series just seems a little tired already.

However, the second half is much stronger, once the action shifts to the Teotec empire. The action is still rather skimpy until the last forty pages or so, but once things start to pop, it’s great. Sadler provides some big battle scenes that are excellent. The whole thing is over the top, but in a good way, and then to wrap things up, he hits some of the same melancholy notes that were so effective in the first book.

So while GOD OF DEATH may be a bit of a sophomore slump for the Casca series, it’s still not bad if you stick with it, and I’m glad I did. With any luck, it won’t be another year before I get around to reading the third book.

Forgotten Books: Casca #1 The Eternal Mercenary - Barry Sadler

The Casca series debuted in 1979, and for years I saw the paperbacks all over the place and even owned a few now and then, but I never got around to reading any of them. In my continuing effort to at least sample some of the series I’ve overlooked, I recently read the first Casca novel, THE ETERNAL MERCENARY.

Despite never having read any of the books, I was familiar with the concept of the series: one of the Roman centurions present at Jesus’ crucifixion, Casca Rufio Longinus, is cursed with immortality and spends the thousands of years since then as an undying soldier, fighting in many wars in many places, always as a mercenary. The first book opens with him in Vietnam, badly wounded but already recovering from injuries that would have killed anybody else. While he’s recovering, he tells a sympathetic doctor about his life history, focusing mostly on the first couple of hundred years after he was cursed, when he fell out of favor with his superiors in the Roman army, was sent to work in the mines as a slave, was an oarsman chained to his oar in a Roman galley, and fought as a gladiator in the arena. Interspersed with these harrowing sequences are more peaceful times, such as when he meets a wanderer from the mysterious East and learns martial arts from him and even settles down for a while as a farmer and has a wife.

The story meanders around through all these elements and maybe goes on just a tiny bit too long, but Sadler’s style is so infectious and full of life—good and bad—that it kept me turning the pages quite happily. He does a great job of capturing Casca’s personality and makes him a very likable protagonist, despite the violence that seems to haunt the character’s life.

I have to wonder about Sadler’s influences: Casca is very similar in many ways to Wolverine, who made his debut in THE INCREDIBLE HULK five years before this novel came out; and the dialogue and relationship between Casca and his Chinese mentor Shiu is very reminiscent of Remo Williams and Chiun from the Destroyer series, which was hugely popular in the decade before the Casca series began. However, I have no way of knowing if Sadler was familiar with any of that, and all writers are influenced by all sorts of things anyway, so it doesn’t really matter. What’s important is that Sadler makes it all work in this book and comes up with something very entertaining and satisfying. I really liked this one, and I’ll be reading more of the Casca novels.