John Maddox Roberts (1947–2024)

John Maddox Roberts spins a grand Space Opera which borrows quite heavily from the Crusades, the Fall of Rome, and the book of Exodus (his main protagonist standing in for a latter day Moses complete with a high tech rod). The writing is crisp, the pace is fast, and his use of descriptors sparse yet effective. But the story, at least for me, falters on a few points. First of all the idea of a virtually indestructible swashbuckling kick-ass ninja warrior priesthood sporting shields and show more surcoats borders on cartoonish...is there anything his fanatical hero, Father Miles, CAN'T do? Furthermore I found the idea of a highly advanced star-faring race still clinging to iron age mythologies---and all the blind faith and magical thinking which that entails---hard to swallow. There's also an assumption that a society cut off from the grand moral beacon of faith (LOL!) will eventually sink into decadent barbarism unless redeemed once more, or as one pious Franciscan monk put it upon landing on a pagan planet, "We've come to replace superstition with religion!" (LMAO!) Or is there a vein of satire running through all the pageantry and proselytizing? With names like "Malatesta", "Mangiapane", "Cato", and "Achillia" being thrown out you only need a rudimentary familiarity with Greco-Roman mythology and highschool Latin to appreciate the joke. At least there is a brief footnote suggesting that the universe may indeed be bigger than any one single belief can encompass and that point alone would be worthy of a sequel. show less

I quite enjoyed this mystery, set in Ancient Rome near the end of the Roman Republic. (Julius Ceasar does appear in the story, but he is a young man and has some time to go before seizing power.) The hero is Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger, currently a young minor official from a high-ranking plebian family. When a series of murders occurs in his jurisdiction, he becomes determined to bring the perpetrators to justice, even though he realizes early on that there is a conspiracy with show more some very high-ranking people involved, and given the current fairly corrupt state of Roman politics, he is unlikely to bring them to book, or even survive the attempt. But he has a somewhat idealistic reverence for true justice, and the Rome of ideals, if not reality, so he pursues the case amongst the very high and very low.

I like political thrillers, and there is a lot of political intrigue going on here. I also studied Latin for five years way back when, and still retain an interest in Ancient Rome. However, if these items are not particularly appealing to the reader, they may find that that Mr. Roberts strayed too far into the informational weeds. Personally, I loved it, but it's definitely not going to suit all tastes. show less

Decius Caecilius Metellus the Younger is sent to Cyprus in 50 BC to look into rumours of a resurgent pirate problem. But who is backing the pirates? The governor? An exiled Roman general? Cleopatra, daughter of the King of Egypt?

The murder and the solution are rather cursorily dealt with, which doesn't really matter since the wheeling and dealing, discussions about piracy, the frankincense trade, etc. were far more interesting.

Temple of the Muses, Book 5 in John Madoxx Roberts SPQR Roman series is flat out a ton of fun. Senator Metellus has been all but been banished to Alexandria, Egypt along with his slave Hermes. Fascinated by the culture our protagonist as usual finds himself embedded in a plot thick with conspiracy and murder. Set several years before the rise of Cleopatra, who plays a minor part of the story, Metellus races against time, daggers, and swords to solve the mystery of why a well-respected show more inventor and philosopher has been murdered. A true highlight in the series. Like the rest of the volumes, it is short enough to keep the reader interested and has very little filler. Madoxx shows a devilish ability to incorporate his research into a very readable story. show less