Primavera del 246 a. C.
Cuando el Atlanta, barco de guerra de la república de Rodas, destruye una embarcación pirata, se sitúa, sin saberlo,en el ojo de un huracán inesperado. Entre las víctima que rescata de los piratas se encuentra una hermosa mujer, Dionisia, favorita del rey de Siria, conocedora de un secreto capaz de sumergir a todo el Mediterráneo oriental en una guerra larga y de vencedor incierto.
Isócrates, el capitán del barco de guerra, un hombre sencillo que ha dedicado toda su vida a combatir la piratería, se verá envuelto en un conflicto diplomático difícil de manejar, tendrá que conseguir evitar que estalle la guerra entre los tres imperios que rodean a Rodas: Egipto, Siria y Macedonia. Amenazado de muerte por la despiadada reina siria Laodice, viajará de un lado a otro del mar en un intento por atrapar a su mayor enemigo y salvar a Dionisia de una muerte segura.

Gillian Bradshaw is one of those authors who does historical fiction brilliantly. Even if I have no interest whatsoever in the historical period which she is writing in, I will pick up her novels because I know they will be excellent. ( )

The spine of the plot is a basic boy-girl romance without any kind of depth. The whole thing is maybe like a Rafael Sabatini swashbuckler. Lots of heroics... probably more heroics than is really plausible. But the whole thing is neatly done - all the bits and pieces fit together well. The plot has some good surprises. The action never lags. There is lots of good historical detail. I would like to have seen more of the dynamics that drove the larger scale conflicts etc. Here the history was really just an exotic setting for exciting battles etc.

This was a perfectly fun read but didn't really open my eyes to any new facet of the human condition... i.e. not any kind of great literature. Ggreat for e.g. a long plane ride though! ( )

Not one of Bradshaw's best,* unfortunately; the romance was telegraphed, and the political plot was ...weird. Hard to follow? Pointless? I can't quite say what was wrong with it, but I've seen her handle plot much better. That said, this is a fun, tidy little novel, set in an awesome period (Hellenistic Greece, omg ilu), with a pretty kickass female protagonist, and I cannot but approve of all of this.


* Light-years better than her English Civil War books, omg. ( )

I usually find Gillian Bradshaw's historical novels a pleasure to read and this one was no exception. It has all the characteristics I particularly enjoy in her work. Its historically accurate without in any way being a dry compendium of factoids. Its full of interesting strong willed characters, male and female, who have agendas and pursue them with courage and creativity, and are sometimes funny and sometimes tragic and always of their time. I particularly appreciate that she writes strong women who are of their time. She doesn't make them proto feminists who have somehow absorbed ideas from the future (a wormhole in time perchance?) but she doesn't make them a bunch of spineless nellies either.

It explores some aspect of history that isn't all that widely known, a time period or a location, or a profession that is a little bit off the beaten path. In this case the story concerns a kithara player trying to build a career for herself and a galley captain for the navy of Rhodes in the time after Alexander's empire has fallen apart. Finally, its a tale, not a tome. Okay sometimes there's a place in my reading for the sprawling decades long epic with the cast of thousands. But at least as often, in fact probably more often, I like a neat, self contained story with a bit of self restraint. Its something I particularly value in historical fiction, which does sometime suffer from a tendency to go on a bit. ( )