Saturnalia (S.P.Q.R. V) - John Maddox
The
SPQR
novels are detective stories set in late
Republican Rome, and I have a weakness for anything matching that description.
Saturnalia,
the fifth in the series, is an improvement on earlier books, but I still can't
warm to the central character, Decius. I
want
to like this series, I really do, but it's
still not working for me.
I think
there are two problems with Roberts' writing. The first is relationships - he
just can't write them. Decius' relationship to his relatives is thin, which
might be forgivable given his family, but I've never read a more cardboard
double act than that of Decius and his slave, Hermes. There is just no sense of
anything human there; most of their conversations feature Decius as the voice of
the author, explaining things to the reader, or consist only of simple
"Hermes, fetch me
this",
"Hermes, fetch me
that" commands.
Worst of all though are Decius'
conversations with his love interest - Julia. She is barely present for most of
the book, and when she is onstage it is pretty much just to exchange plot
tokens, or to explain the plot by engaging Decius in one of the all-too-frequent
"As you know
Bob..." scenes.
This tendency to info-dump is Roberts'
second weakness. The man couldn't slip some background subtly into a scene if
both were greased first, no, much better to just lecture the reader! For
example, here is an representative conversation between Decius and Julia, just
after Saturnalia:
(Decius)"Did you hear
anything last night?"
(Julia)"I may have. [...] and
the ladies of the various households visited among themselves, bringing gifts.
It's traditional."
Good grief -
that's like reading a modern book where our hero is explaining Christmas to his
girlfriend... It gets worse too:
(Julia) "Since my uncle is
pontifex maximus, we went nowhere. Everyone came to us. Only the family of the
Flamen Dailis has as much prestige, and there hasn't been one of those in almost
thirty years." The high priest of Jupiter was so bound by ritual and taboo that
it was increasingly difficult to find anyone who wanted to assume the position,
prestigious as it was.
Good grief
again. Decius knows
this! There's no need to explain it, or at
least, not in such a clumsy manner. And to follow that lecture from Julia with
an follow-up in the narrator's voice? Ugh. Worse again, this is the bulk of the
conversation between a man who has had several near death experiences in the
past few days, and who hasn't seen his girlfriend over the biggest holiday of
the year, a time when in fact she's been helping him with his enquiries,
possibly putting herself in harm's way! Is their meeting then full of warmth and
affection? Does Roberts show any emotional relationship between the two of them
at all? Ha, no, I have a stronger relationship with my toaster than Decius and
Julia have in this novel. This stands in stark contrast to the love plot-lines
in Saylor's Roman Sub
Rosa
series, or even Lindsey Davis' marvellously
soap opera like
Falco
novels.
Still, despite the author's tin ear
for human relationships, Saturnalia
is set in my favourite historical period, and
it's a genre I like - SPQR
'll do until the next Steven Saylor book comes
out.
I'm tempted to try Wishart next -
seems to get good reviews.
Posted: Fri - July 25, 2003 at 10:03 PM