4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Weakest novel to date, September 2, 2004
This review is from: Widow's Pique (Hardcover)
It's unfortunate, but Todd's tenth Claudia Seferius mystery is probably the worst.
Todd has has our lovable heroine hotfooting it off to the tiny Roman governed client kingdom of Histria. Failure to read the contractual small print means she thinks she's off to negotiate a lucrative wine contract but after considerable stringing along she discovers that it's in fact to marry the King. After ariving on the peninsula she finds herself chaperoned by the effortlessly personable Mazares, the oak tree that is Pavan and the King's close family comprising the King's brother, Kazan, his wife Rosmerta, their sons, Marek and Mir and finally Vanu, married to one of the sons but sleeping with Kazan. As usual bodies start turning up although these are historical. - Mazares first wife, Brac - first in line to throne, the old king Dol, Mazares, son and daughter, a boat builder, the physician until we get quite a list. After dressing up as a goddess for the Zeltane festival Caludia spends most her time figuring out how to escape her impending matimony and the rest half heartedly chasing down ridiculous murder theories and spending time at the local stray waifs farm headed up by Salome, Tobias, Lora and the rest of the white robed Amazons.
All the while we get Todd's small chapter inserts into the mind of the murderer - this time called Nosferatu.
It's all a bit tedious until Orbilio turns up to turn over Claudia's stomach again and save the day, Claudia, and anyone else who happens to be around. As I said, this is the weakest of the Serferius novels simply because it's not exciting in any way and Claudia's heart's just not in it. Maybe we've a classic case of Davis here - our heroine needs to be in Rome to be at her best. Hopefully the next one will have Claudia back to her spitting, fiery self...
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3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Greatly disappointing, April 11, 2005
This review is from: Widow's Pique (Hardcover)
I checked this out from the library when I found the latest Falco book was checked out. I wanted to try some Roman mystery by a different author.
What a mistake. This book was a great disappointment. The characters were mostly annoying. The anachronistic references were even more annoying (I find it unlikely that "Little Miss Moffet" was an ancient Roman nursery rhyme). The last straw was when the characters started making puns that only worked in English (yet the characters, one assumes, were supposedly speaking Latin).
The mystery was okay. There didn't seem to be much in the way of clues--just a bunch of guesses based on Claudia's intuition (most of which turns out to be irrelevant anyway). The ending is a surprise, but a good surprise is of the "I should have seen that! You got me," variety. This was more of a "Where did that come from? That seems rather desparate," surprise.
Perhaps the other books in the series are better. I think I'll stick to Steven Saylor and Lindsey Davis.
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