Wounds of Honour
by Anthony Riches
Reviewed by Coral
With his family condemned as traitors to the Emperor Commodus, Marcus Valerius Aquila has to rely on friends of his father to save his life. Secreted away to the remote outposts on Hadrian’s Wall, Marcus has arrived just in time to face an uprising of the tribes north of the Wall.
Facing enemies on all sides, Marcus will have to rely on himself and the few people he can call friends if he is to survive.
I liked this book enough that I am currently looking for the second in the series, but there were a couple of minor things that I didn’t like.
I thought the romance subplot between Marcus and Felicia was unnecessary and poorly handled. Why would Marcus just reveal his secrets to a strange woman out of the blue? They barely interacted with each other before they were “in love”. It also seemed wrong to me that, given the time period, Felicia could ask her husband for a divorce. Though I’m not sure exactly when woman could or couldn’t ask for divorces on their own in Rome.
I also didn’t find it very realistic that Marcus was so anti-torture when it came to prisoners, since that was a pretty common occurrence. I’ve seen this pop up in more than one book set in ancient times and I think it’s mainly just a way to make sure we relate to the main characters.
The ending seemed pretty unbelievable to me. There was one character who had, up until that point, acted in a pretty shrewd manner and then at the end they just start acting like an idiot. I don’t believe for a second that the character as described beforehand would actually have acted in that manner. But he had to, because the book’s heroes have to win.
Grade: B
