Marius' Mules: The Invasion of Gaul

I had just finished Adrian Goldsworthy’s excellent Vindolanda series (three volumes to date with more to come, I hope) and so was very interested to find the Marius’s Mules books. What a disappointment. Goldsworthy is an excellent historian whose turn at historical fiction has been quite interesting. The Mules books are “G.I. Joe” with a little Latin lingo and so much colloquial English that my “willing suspension of disbelief” was constantly interrupted. (My memory isn’t as solid as it once was so I flipped back through several hundred e-book pages to find illustrations; e.g. use of modern terms such as “top secret” and the hero Fronto ordering meetings in one half hour etc.) I realize these stories depict ancient Latin speakers conversing in English to make them understandable and approachable. But, with the limpid writing (e.g. Caesarean officers who mote often resemble fraternity boys) and jolting anachronistic language, I just cannot recommend these books. I bought and down-loaded three of the Marius’s Mules books. I am deleting entries 2 and 3 as they are simply not worth my time. Meanwhile, I’ll read Goldsworthy’s The Roman Army or some of his other Roman histories while awaiting publication of volume 4 of his Vindolanda series.

Entertaining and diverting, but goodness, the author needs a line editor to clean up the story. Reads like a really good first draft. Hard to keep the characters clear. Who was who? Uneven pacing. But full of fun details...