The Colosseum by Keith Hopkins and Mary Beard

Review by jjares

This book discusses every aspect of the Colosseum, from how many gladiators were killed in an average year to how the Colosseum was built initially vs. remodeled. With so few records remaining, it is difficult to understand the number of gladiator deaths. However, the authors scraped together every scrap of information to write their book.

First, the gladiator movies are just that — someone’s idea of how they occurred in Rome. But no one knows for sure. After extensive research, the authors believe gladiator matches were less common than in the movies. They determined that famous gladiators probably fought twice each year. For several reasons, gladiators cost a lot to train and keep healthy. In addition, Rome taxed the gladiators’ owners heavily.

The authors estimate that 8000 gladiators died yearly (throughout the Empire). They mention that killing that many healthy young men had to have depleted the military over time. Although the gladiators were not in the military, young men were selected to become gladiators at about 17. This reduced the number available to join the military.

The authors discuss the placement of different classes of Roman citizens in the Colosseum. First, of course, the nobles, senators, and knights sat nearest to the Emperor. Although the shows were free to Roman citizens, lower-class people sat further away from the action.

After research, the authors conclude that the events were not as frequent or wild as movies indicate. It was so expensive to put on these events that only the Emperor or wealthy nobles could foot the bill for these extravaganzas. Then, they turned their attention to the wild animal hunting in the Colosseum. Again, the authors found that animal killings weren’t as common as movies portray. It was expensive and time-consuming to bring wild animals to Rome. To spend so much money and immediately kill the animals seemed counterintuitive to the authors.

However, I’d like to skip over to the killing of the Christians in the Colosseum. The authors found no record of Christians being eaten in the Colosseum. None. However, the Christians developed a writing genre to celebrate martyrs. Early Christians told stories about animals tearing brave souls apart while the Christians prayed to God.

The final chapter was interesting because the authors studied how the Colosseum changed over the generations. Separate groups caused these changes. First, after the fall of Rome, the Colosseum fell into disuse. A variety of folks took up living and working in the building. Then, the papacy earned money by selling off cartloads of the Colosseum’s detritus (valuable exterior travertine and concrete). This continued for hundreds of years.
The second group was the Christians. By the Middle Ages, hundreds of stories of slain martyrs had been written, and the Christians claimed that the Colosseum should be saved for its Christian significance (even though there are no actual primary source accounts to substantiate this). Thereupon, the Pope and various Christian groups did restoration work.

The next groups to demand the Colosseum for their use were the archaeologists and botanists. From 1870 on, archaeologists excavated the floor and subfloors until rain collected at the base of the Colosseum and called a stop to their study. But the most unique group has to be the botanists. Over the centuries, over 400 different fauna species took hold in the Colosseum. It is thought the seeds were in the coats of wild animals! After the excavations by the archaeologists, almost 200 species were lost. However, despite the neglect, so many plants survived in the Colosseum. Many of them were not naturally found in Italy.

This book vacillated between fascinating and boring. However, I did learn that the Colosseum is elliptical in shape (not round) and is renowned as the largest amphitheater in the world. It is also one of the Seven New Wonders of the World.

Nop’s Trials by Donald McCaig

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

NOP’S TRIALS by Donald McCaig is a story about a man’s love for his dog. Rest easy: the dog does not die. But if you have a heart you will cry.

Lewis Burkholder raises cattle and sheep on his farm in Virginia. Like most, he has a dog to help him move the stock around.  Nop is a promising young Border Collie, and Lewis has high hopes that Nop will become not just indispensible around the farm but a competitor in stockdog trials.

On Christmas morning a covetous neighbor sees Nop near the road and scoops him up. Thus begin Nop’s trials – as he is passed from person to person, some of them kind and many of them not.  Border Collies are the most intelligent of dogs, and Nop has to use everything he knows to survive.

Lewis is a man of few words and doesn’t express emotion easily. He will not and cannot believe his dog is gone forever. He has an idea about the person who took Nop and he starts there. It’s going to be a tortuous path, tracing down every lead, and he’s still got a farm to run.

How Nop works to save himself and how Lewis finally finds him is suspenseful, emotional and heart-wrenching.  McCaig knows the life of a farmer like Lewis and depicts it with loving detail.  Lewis and Nop are the star characters and the reader will get to know them quite well.

This isn’t always the easiest book to read. The things people do to dogs and other animals can be difficult to read about. But there are moments of grace too. Nop’s courage and Lewis’s steadfast loyalty and determination shine throughout. It’s not a fast, action-filled read, but it moves ahead with a steady pace, so take your time. I promise you will feel joyous at the end.

A Trail Through Time by Jody Taylor

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

This is Jodi Taylor’s fourth entry in the Chronicles of St Mary’s, an institute whose mission is to travel back in time and observe history. There are some spoilers for previous novels, so you have been warned. A new reader should start with the beginning, JUST ONE DAMNED THING AFTER ANOTHER, which I reviewed here.

It is pretty much non-stop running for our two heroes, Max and Leon.  We are firmly into alternate timeline territory  now.  Max (let’s call her Max1) has arrived in a timeline where she (Max2) died and Leon lived, and now suddenly there’s Max1 – almost but not quite the same person. Leon and Max are both appalled but ecstatic and they plan on living happily and quietly ever after. We know that ain’t gonna happen, not in this book.

Taylor introduces the Time Police, a paramilitary group created by treaty in this new timeline after the secret of time travel escaped. World governments seized on the opportunity to change history in their favor, and (according to Leon) chaos ensued, with entire countries flickering in and out of existence.

But now the Time Police are after Max, so Max and Leon spend quite a lot of time leaping from place to place trying to avoid them. We experience some good vignettes of history, like London’s Frost Fair.  I can’t really get into the pursuit reasons without major spoilers for this book, so I’ll  leave it at that.  It’s breakneck action for quite a long time.

They finally go to ground at St Mary’s, where Max1 Is going to have to reconcile the differences between her and Max2.  It all comes to a conclusion with a huge climatic battle between the residents of St Mary’s and the Time Police, in which the good guys practically blow up St Mary’s.  It’s grim but as usual there are also some funny scenes in it, complete with snappy dialogue.

I enjoyed seeing some characters that I didn’t expect. I thought Joe’s last scene was totally heartless – I wish I thought Taylor would return to that someday so we’d know what happened.  Loved the little bits of history we get to know as Max and Leon travel.

Taylor never pretended to try and work out the logical problems with her time travel story.  It’s amusing enough that I’m willing to go with her plots and not think much about inconsistencies. However, in the very first book it’s stated that it is impossible to change history, because History will actively defend itself even if that means killing  you in the process. We saw examples. We started to see it falter in the second book, and now it’s just gone. I can see from the trial scene why it was necessary for Max1 to be in that particular timeline. But it’s getting harder for my logical side to ignore the discrepancies, although I’m still enjoying the story. Will we find out in later books why history can be changed? I hope so. Number 5 is on my to-be-read list.

The Case of the Waylaid Wolf by Erle Stanley Gardner

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

In his father’s company, rich and spoiled playboy Loring Lamont keeps an eye peeled for attractive female employees. He tricks stenographer Arlene Ferris into coming to his father’s cabin hideaway. They cozily cook ham and eggs together. Lamont moves in. Arlene, however, is decidedly not, as they used to say in 1960, “a broad-minded girl with a tolerant view of life.”

His moves change from an unwanted advance into a violent attempted date rape. Arlene flees the cabin, but the wolf pursues the pretty lamb through the woods. Shrewdly running an end-around, she “borrows” his car in order to get back to town, though in a mocking touch she does end up parking it outside his apartment by a fire hydrant.

The next morning Arlene visits lawyer Perry Mason to discuss filing charges against the player. Set in the late 1950s, this book is set before the enactment of rape shield laws. In the bad old days, with impunity defenders of accused rapists would relentlessly drag the reputations of rape complainants through the mud. Mason points out the rich Lamont family would sic detectives on her private life. Arlene, a fighter, retains Mason to pursue the case because she wants Lamont’s predatory behavior stopped. If she can save just one woman the anguish of her experience with Lamont, the risks of a suit would be worth it.

As it turns out, though, Arlene faces legal trouble because after her departure from the cabin, somebody stabbed Lamont to death with a butcher knife. Homicide detective Lt. Tragg and DA Hamilton Burger are grimly certain unlucky Arlene lead Lamont on and stabbed him to death for the thrill of it.

This is the 100th book in Gardner’s long successful career. So Gardner confidently and deftly gets all his ducks in a row. For instance, Gardner likes to fog things up with pairs. Two cars confuse a police officer. Two skirts confuse Lt. Tragg. Looking similar enough to confuse hopelessly a record store owner are Arlene and her friend Madge (the retro names are always fun in Gardner).

Also, Gardner tests Perry Mason’s prime directive “Always trust your client” because the evidence against Arlene indicates she’s being economical with the truth.

Finally, Gardner’s realism is matter-of-fact, the product of a lifetime of asking questions, listening, reading, and writing about our system of criminal justice, police procedures and proclivities, and the fallibility and waywardness of us ordinary people.

Ringworld by Larry Niven

Review by Cyndi J. (cyndij)

RINGWORLD, published in 1970 by Larry Niven, is one of the classics of science fiction.  It won the Hugo, Locus, and Nebula awards and it’s still well worth reading today. It generated several sequels (although Ringworld was meant as a standalone), then more prequels, and an entire multiverse of spin-offs in novels and games. Niven co-wrote a number of those and licensed other authors as well.

Louis Wu is celebrating his 200th birthday and feeling a bit bored. But into his party pops a Pierson’s puppeteer – an alien so reclusive and outlandish they are practically myth. Nessus has a job offer for Louis, a trip to a world that defies imagination – an immense ring created around a sun. It is so immense it could hold millions of Earths and the idea that it could be a created object is incredibly frightening – what species could do such a thing? Louis accepts and in short order is joined by Speaker To Animals, a ferocious feline-like alien Kzinti, and Teela Brown, a human woman who is supposedly the luckiest person on Earth. Nessus has his reasons for picking each of them and their relationships are a highlight of the story.

The trip will first take them to the Puppeteer’s homeworld, its location a closely held secret, and then to the Ringworld. But a catastrophe occurs and they crash-land  Their only hope is to attempt to travel to the rim of the world, thousands and thousands of miles away, and get help from the engineers who must live there. It will take months, but fortunately they have flycycles and matter converters, so they can travel quickly and won’t run out of food. As they travel though, they begin to notice some very alarming signs.  And they’re not exactly working well as a team, either.

Niven’s alien characters do feel  alien even if not super well-fleshed out; we get some nuances, but not too much besides Puppeteer cowardice and Kzinti ferocity. But the big flaw is the female characters. There’s only two – one is 18-yr-old Teela, who can do nothing because she’s always been so lucky she didn’t need to (but she can have sex with 200-yr-old Louis, eww), and the other is a prostitute.  Gee, what other roles could there be for women… In 1970s male-dominated SF this didn’t raise a lot of flags. Today, well, it’s pretty irritating.

Niven’s idea of the Ringworld is actually kind of plausible; a lot of physics thinking went into it.  The descriptions are fabulous; your mind boggles trying to comprehend the immensity of this artifact. The various environments, the inhabitants, the shadow squares…I could go on, but there are just some great ideas. Puppeteer manipulation of both human and Kzinti species, that was pretty funny.  Louis himself is rather amusing, it’s mostly told from his POV and he gets some pretty snappy dialogue.

If you want hard science fiction with big ideas and a journey through alien landscapes you’ll totally love it. If you want thoughtful human interaction and emotional content, not so much. But any science-fiction reader should put this on their list, if they haven’t already.  It had a tremendous influence on the SF field, it’s still in print 50 years later, and despite its flaws it’s very good.

My Brother’s Killer by D.M. Devine

Review by Matt B. (BuffaloSavage)

Though written in 1961, this English mystery uses to excellent effect the tried-and-true devices of whodunits during their Golden Age of the 1920s and 1930s. Think of Freeman Wills Crofts and his alibis, time-tables, and accounting for everybody’s movements. No wonder Agatha Christie highly praised this story.

The mystery is told in first-person by Simon, the brother of the victim Oliver Barnett. Both brothers are solicitors in their family practice. Simon can’t believe that, given his war record, Oliver could have taken his own life, as the crime scene seems to indicate. Both Simon and the Superintendent in charge of the investigation come to the conclusion it was murder. Instead playing the stock character of the thick flat-foot, Superintendent Garland, the lead detective, is as sharp as Simon.

Simon assembles a team to investigate murder. The narrative features the traditional plot twists and red herrings. As Simon and his mates peel the onion of Oliver’s life, however, it’s enough to make Simon cry to find out how many people would relish seeing Oliver roasting in his Eternal Just Deserts.

D. M. Devine (1920-1980), the Scottish author of 13 crime novels, was very popular in his time as a master of the classic detective story. This classic was re-released by Arcturus Publishing in 2012 as part of its program of re-issues of forgotten masterpieces.