Customer Reviews

Casca The Damned

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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An interesting account of the Huns invasion of Western Europe in the 5th century, told through the eyes of Casca, fighting for the last time for the Roman Legions. The account of the battle between Attila's Huns and the legions under Aetius is well written. There is a poignant part early on when he returns to a favourite place we read about in an earlier novel, and one can't help but feel for the character. Certainly well worth a read.

The bedrock of the Casca series is built on a firm foundation of easy to read passages, strong characters and an exotic historical setting. Some of the series lacked some or even all of these points, but the Damned had them all. The added fact it was set in the dying days of the Western Roman Empire made it more interesting.

Sadler wasn't the greatest writer but he was able to draw you into his stories and one of the peaks of his writing came in this book when Casca, tired of the fighting and emotionally wrecked by the sight of the Visigothic sack of Rome, retreated from civilisation and found himself drawn back to the place he last felt at home, Helsfjord (see Casca 5: The Barbarian). This part of the book brought home the fact Sadler could write pathos and was capable of projecting sadness and solitude, a lesson surely to us all that immortality isn't something to aspire to, but is in fact a curse.

Sadler's style was developing all the time and here he had a sub-plot which was missing in many of his novels. The sub-plot involved a Chinese courtier teaming up with the Huns under Attila and taught them the wisdom of war as taught by the scrolls of Sun Tzu. This is something anyone with an interest in warfare ought to study. The two plots converge later on when Casca is roused out of his depression and rejoins the Roman army in time to fight in the Battle of Catalunian Plains, one of the most important fights in history, when Attila is finally stopped.

The book slightly unravels at the end when Attila is concentrated on, and we see his death and burial. The last paragraph has Casca viewing the burial and this then leads the reader onto the start of Casca 9: The Sentinel. A good, interesting and very competently written story.

A good story set in the dying days of the western Roman Empire. Casca returns to Rome to find Christianity has taken hold and has to prove his worth in the arena and gain his freedom. Fighting against the Goths he is captured and witnesses Rome being plundered.

After being set free he leaves the fighting and returns to Helsfjord and finds it deserted. This is a very poignant passage and brings home just what eternal life means. Eventually he returns to the empire to fight against Attila and the Huns and this is the climax of the story.

Very good and well worth a read. For more on Casca and other stories see www.casca.net

I liked this book for a couple of reasons. The first, and most obvious is that it is just a plain old well written story.

The second is the feeling of familiarity in some of the things Casca experiences here. Twice in the story he goes back to places that meant something to him in the distant past. This is something I think all of us have felt when walking through the halls of the school you attended as a child or driving by the house you grew up in. Places, by themselves, are nothing without the people that made them special. The way Sadler relates this feeling really stands out in this book.