Pompei (2003)

Just about everyone participating in the Poll Ballot Tally Challenge is reading Pompeii for Hawaii so I'm not going to put together a very long review. Readers already know a lot about the last days of Pompeii, and that everything and everyone, finally, will be overwhelmed by disaster.

Harris has obviously done a good job of research on volcanoes and aqueducts, and it shows. And it does make the story more interesting to use Pliny's words on the eruption of Vesuvius almost step by step to give the story more weight. The fictional part was less than interesting, but not the worst book I've read this year.



1341 ( )

I could not put this book down! It completely satisfied my love for history and past life, especially in Pompeii. I felt like I was IN the past, experiencing life as it was in Pompeii before the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. This is an absolutely beautiful and stunning novel, and I recommend it to anyone who loves history and finds themselves dreaming of what it would be like to live back in those days. ( )

I picked this up having recently visited Pompeii, thinking it might be interesting to read something set in that city. I had such optimism, despite this looking more like the sort of book my husband would read. It occurred to me that setting it in the last few days before the eruption of Mount Vesuvius meant there weren’t many readers out there who didn’t already know the ending, but surely a good author can find their way around a problem like that.

It was interesting to read the author’s take on Pompeii in its heyday. He’s obviously been round the red light district same as me and seen the carvings in the road! And it was interesting (up to a point) to learn about the business of constructing aqueducts. And if there was a stand-out section it had to be the multi-course meal which is perhaps the only thing in literature that has come close to making me spontaneously vomit. But otherwise this was a rather dull account of lots of people with similar names prancing around in tunics, culminating in lots of rock falling on those people, this last event being drawn out to a wholly unbearable degree. Should have gone with my instincts. ( )

In August AD 79 the new aquarius in charge of the Aqua Augusta aqueduct serving Pompeii, Herculaneum, Nola, and Misenum finds that the aqueduct has stopped producing water and investigates why.

The aqueduct was far more interesting than the characters, who I found to be rather flat cliches to the point it was fairly obvious within a few pages of each character being introduced who was going to survive ( )

This book does an excellent job of reconstructing the Pompeii eruption. The main character is a water system engineer, responsible for maintaining aqueducts, and I appreciated the setting even more for having watched a lecture on Roman water systems. Although we all know how the story ends—do we?—Harris steadily ratchets up the tension, and maintains some suspense about the main characters. The writing isn't fantastic and the characters are a bit flat, but overall "Pompeii" is a fun and educational story. ( )