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51 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Makes the Alamo sound like a little girl's afternoon tea party!, July 18, 2005
This review is from: Eagle in the Snow: A Novel of General Maximus and Rome's Last Stand (Hardcover)
I ordered this book from Amazon when I was in the middle of a Roman phase spurred on by Colleen McCullough's Rome series. I was initially a little cautious since the book was written in the sixties and I did not know if I was going to get a great read or something dry and fusty. Let me allay any possible fears: this is a GREAT book!!! I absolutely loved it. In fact, I was cruising through the bargain bin of the local bookstore last month and came across four copies that had been marked down and I bought them immediately. I want to be able to give them away to four lucky individuals. So yes, it is a fantastic book, and one that I would not only heartily recommend, but one I will plunk folding money down for so I can share this with my friends.
I loved this book. The level of character development was amazing, the writing vivid, the pacing accelerates throughout the novel, but most of all I loved the creeping sense of despair, futility, and hopelessness in the novel. That sounds odd, but bear with me. Maximus is an old line, successful, stalwart, and brilliant legate (general) who is literally holding the fort against the Picts and other woolly boys along Hadrian's Wall roughly about 400 AD. The empire is crumbling, but then again it's been crumbling for 200 years. From there Maximus is sent to the Rhine with one legion, the XX, to hold back the hordes of Germans from invading Gaul.
When I initially read this I was astonished. What? One legion? Caesar had four when he crossed the Rhine; Augustus stationed 8 legions along the Rhine to hold the Germans back. This was when Rome was at it's strongest, the troops hard-bitten veterans, and the Germans divided, beaten down and occupied. In this novel, the Germans were ascendant again, extremely populous, and desperately wanting to move to Gaul for the twin reasons that it had more fertile land and that the Huns were pushing them mercilessly. So Maximums was supposed to hold the Rhine with only one legion? Do you know how long the Rhine is? I couldn't fathom it. Yet, the wily old fox, time after time, overcame obstacles, despair, mutinous troops, lack of food and winter gear, surly and unhelpful townsfolk, and every hardship imaginable to overawe, out-think, and out-fight the Germans. His cunning, ruthlessness, and determination are stunning. I felt like I was reading with my mouth open the whole time, because this was real!!! Yet that creeping despair, futility, and hopelessness......for it was the death of a thousand cuts; Maximus fought, twisted, dodged, danced, lied, ambushed, tricked and did everything in his power to hold the line but every victory was a Pyhrric one that bled away a little more strength.
Folks, this one was a magnificient book and I highly recommend it. I don't want to give away anything here to spoil your read, so let me just say that you can't go wrong on this one. Get it, read it, savor it, and think about it for years. I have never forgotten this novel nor do I think it's possible to do so. It makes the Alamo sound like a little girl's afternoon tea party. They just don't get much better than this.
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23 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Gripping tale of the fall of Rome; BUT 2002 UK pb best bet, December 2, 1999
His name is Maximus, the book's narrator and principled protagonist, and he may be the last of the old-style Romans whose virtues (and failings) built and maintained an empire for centuries. This exquisite book is the story of his struggle to remain true to the old values that he loves amid a world that has changed; a Roman world that is failing. He becomes the general of Legio XX after a hard apprenticeship in the backwater of imperial Britannia and is given the thankless task of holding the Rhine frontier against a sea of land-hungry barbarian tribes. His task seems hopeless, but Maximus holds to it with grim determination and through personal trials, not least of which is the temptation to proclaim himself Emperor and salvage what he can from the shifting alliances of the time. Using military strategems and cunning diplomacy, Maximus keeps Rome's foes at bay until the fates turn against him.
Wallace Breem, a veteran of the Indian Army, recreates a military world that is detailed and believeable. His novel is awash in the conflict of civilization against barbarism, pagan versus Christian; it is an unsentimental story, told directly and without elaborate flourishes, but one that is still rich and deeply moving. A perfect read in the chill of winter, when the final third of the book will hold a special resonance.
No one who has ever discovered this book seems to have forgotten it; what a thunderbolt from Jove, to see this book in print again! I have treasured my copy of the original US edition for years. Previously, this title was reissued in paperback in Britain in 2002 from the Phoenix Press, and *that* is the superior version, I have to say. The original maps are not as nice as those in the new hardback edition, but there is a poignant Latin coda at the end of the original text, along the lines of a Roman funerary inscription, that is MISSING from both the new American Rugged Land editions (hardback and paperback) -- how do these things happen? Shame on the publisher. This coda ties up some lingering questions about how Maximus' narrative came to be and is a fitting sign-off to this powerful story. If you miss this, as readers of this version will, you're missing a wonderful closer. Seek out the UK paperback, with the frontal painting of a Roman soldier on the cover. (The abridged versions show the back of a soldier; that's how you can tell which to Back Away from.)
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15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Makes the Alamo sound like a little girl's afternoon tea party!, July 18, 2005
I ordered this book from Amazon when I was in the middle of a Roman phase spurred on by Colleen McCullough's Rome series. I was initially a little cautious since the book was written in the sixties and I did not know if I was going to get a great read or something dry and fusty. Let me allay any possible fears: this is a GREAT book!!! I absolutely loved it. In fact, I was cruising through the bargain bin of the local bookstore last month and came across four copies that had been marked down and I bought them immediately. I want to be able to give them away to four lucky individuals. So yes, it is a fantastic book, and one that I would not only heartily recommend, but one I will plunk folding money down for so I can share this with my friends.
I loved this book. The level of character development was amazing, the writing vivid, the pacing accelerates throughout the novel, but most of all I loved the creeping sense of despair, futility, and hopelessness in the novel. That sounds odd, but bear with me. Maximus is an old line, successful, stalwart, and brilliant legate (general) who is literally holding the fort against the Picts and other woolly boys along Hadrian's Wall roughly about 400 AD. The empire is crumbling, but then again it's been crumbling for 200 years. From there Maximus is sent to the Rhine with one legion, the XX, to hold back the hordes of Germans from invading Gaul.
When I initially read this I was astonished. What? One legion? Caesar had four when he crossed the Rhine; Augustus stationed 8 legions along the Rhine to hold the Germans back. This was when Rome was at it's strongest, the troops hard-bitten veterans, and the Germans divided, beaten down and occupied. In this novel, the Germans were ascendant again, extremely populous, and desperately wanting to move to Gaul for the twin reasons that it had more fertile land and that the Huns were pushing them mercilessly. So Maximums was supposed to hold the Rhine with only one legion? Do you know how long the Rhine is? I couldn't fathom it. Yet, the wily old fox, time after time, overcame obstacles, despair, mutinous troops, lack of food and winter gear, surly and unhelpful townsfolk, and every hardship imaginable to overawe, out-think, and out-fight the Germans. His cunning, ruthlessness, and determination are stunning. I felt like I was reading with my mouth open the whole time, because this was real!!! Yet that creeping despair, futility, and hopelessness......for it was the death of a thousand cuts; Maximus fought, twisted, dodged, danced, lied, ambushed, tricked and did everything in his power to hold the line but every victory was a Pyhrric one that bled away a little more strength.
Folks, this one was a magnificient book and I highly recommend it. I don't want to give away anything here to spoil your read, so let me just say that you can't go wrong on this one. Get it, read it, savor it, and think about it for years. I have never forgotten this novel nor do I think it's possible to do so. It makes the Alamo sound like a little girl's afternoon tea party. They just don't get much better than this.
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