Write Out Loud (Reviews and Writing)

“…a damned good yarn that stretches things a little bit…”

After the super story that was book XIII, it was going to be a hard act to follow for Caroline Lawrence. She doesn’t quite manage it with this outing but then there’s a sense that this may be intentional. We’re just three books away from the last in the series after this and at the moment I don’t know how much the author intended that to be the case.

Was she like J K Rowling who had the ending planned all along and knew Harry Potter would always be seven books? Or did Lawrence just get to seventeen and decide the series had run its course? With my usual rule of finding out as little as possible about authors and books before I finish their books, I won’t know until I get to the end of the final one, but my suspicions are brewing.

Why is this important? Because I feel this book is a ‘calm before the storm’ thing. Almost nothing happens with driving the larger plots forward. Everyone is still reeling from the tragedy of the last book and Flavia, the central character in this collection of Roman detective stories featuring four children, is still not quite ready for the marriage that’s clearly on the horizon. From a plot point of view then, this whole book is effectively a prologue – we’re building to some kind of climax.

In terms of the story itself, there’s a certain degree of disbelief here. Our four young heroes are sent by the emperor himself to Africa on a dangerous mission to steal a precious gem. The mission itself gets even more dangerous when, soon after landing on the coast of Africa, their boat sets sail without them and they have to trek across the desert to get to their final destination. Even allowing for the fact that ‘kids’ of those days were more like young adults of today, this is an absurd mission. Titus would surely have better ways to obtain a much-wanted jewel. Then there’s the fact that the parents of Flavia and Jonathan never seem to know where they are or what dangerous scrapes they get into.

What’s more, this is the homeland of Nubia, the black slave girl Flavia saved and befriended in book I. I expected more of a story about her but it seems, in this world, Nubia is just as lost as the rest of her friends. I felt this should have been the ideal vehicle to bring her story to completion as we do need to start wrapping up the mysteries surrounding these kids.

All these criticisms being made, this is still Caroline Lawrence doing what she does and doing it well. As usual, you can’t help but learn lots about the customs and culture of Roman society circa AD 80. Remembering this is YA/children’s literature, you can suspend belief long enough to enjoy the ride. And perhaps, given the heartbreak and turmoil of the previous book, what we needed was a damned good yarn that stretches things a little bit. In a sense, this book will be judged by what comes next as we reach the end trio of books where so many strands need to be drawn in and sewn up properly together.

My verdict:

Read all the reviews for this series:

• Reflection: The Roman Mysteries by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries I – The Thieves of Ostia by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries II – The Secrets of Vesuvius by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries III – The Pirates of Pompeii
• The Roman Mysteries IV – The Assassins of Rome by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries V – The Dolphins of Laurentum by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries VI – The Twelve Tasks of Flavia Gemina by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries VII – The Enemies of Jupiter by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries VIII – The Gladiators from Capua by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries IX – The Colossus of Rhodes by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries X – The Fugitive from Corinth by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries XI – The Sirens of Surrentum by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries XII – The Charioteer of Delphi by Caroline Lawrence
• The Roman Mysteries XIII – The Slave-girl from Jerusalem by Caroline Lawrence

Social Entrepreneur, educationalist, bestselling author and journalist, D K Powell is the author of the bestselling collection of literary short stories “The Old Man on the Beach“. His first book, ‘Sonali’ is a photo-memoir journal of life in Bangladesh and has been highly praised by the Bangladeshi diaspora worldwide. Students learning the Bengali language have also valued the English/Bengali translations on every page. His third book is ‘Try not to Laugh’ and is a guide to memorising, revising and passing exams for students.

Both ‘The Old Man on the Beach’ and ‘Sonali’ are available on Amazon for kindle and paperback. Published by Shopno Sriti Media. The novel,’The Pukur’, was published by Histria Books in 2022.

D K Powell is available to speak at events (see his TEDx talk here) and can be contacted at dkpowell.contact@gmail.com. Alternatively, he is available for one-to-one mentoring and runs a course on the psychology of writing. Listen to his life story in interview with the BBC here.

Ken writes for a number of publications around the world. Past reviewer for Paste magazine, The Doughnut, E2D and United Airways and Lancashire Life magazine. Currently reviews for Northern Arts Review. His reviews have been read more than 7.9 million times.

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