Finished Ross Leckie's Scipio in the wee hours of yesterday; decided to stay up until I'd finished it after a row with my wife. For such a readable book I'm not at all sure whether I enjoyed it. It's set in Rome during the second Punic War. I'm not entirely sure why, but Punic basically means Carthage. The Romans have been taking a pounding from Hannibal - the guy with the elephants who crosses the Alps in winter (supposedly impossible) to invade Italy - and Scipio reforms the somewhat moribund Roman army to dramatic effect and saving the Republic. It's written as a memoir dictated by Scipio to his friend/servant/lover Bostar. Bostar and Scipio tell their stories intermitantly until the action starts hotting up at which Bostar's story annoyingly tails off. Bostar makes the point (again and again) that Scipio is an unreflective narrator whose lack of self knowledge makes him unreliable. Furtunately at any point where the reader might have to do any work at all, Bostar pitches up and beats us around the head with the authorial perspective. It's a cracking historical novel though. I would have liked to understand a bit more about the rivalry between Cato and Scipio which forms a major part of the plot but is never really elucidated.

Apparently this is the second of a trilogy. Will I read the other two? Only if I can pick them up for £2 in the remainder bookshop as I did with this one.