
Of Merchants and Heroes is the first novel by Paul Waters, who ran away to sea at 17 and during his travels fell so much in love with the classical world that he went on to get a degree in classics. He certainly knows his stuff. His world-building is excellent, evocative and authentic. But this novel just didn't work for me. It's partly a problem of pacing. The story gets off to a cracking start with the ship's capture and Marcus's escape. Then it slows to an uphill crawl whilst other people are introduced and we follow Marcus's rather dull career in agriculture and trade. It doesn't pick up again until over halfway through when the love story takes off and the tale hurtles toward its denouement with tense and vivid action scenes worthy of Bernard Cornwell, Conn Iggulden or Simon Scarrow, interspersed with a little philosophy-lite.
The other problem lies in the characters, who never quite rise from the page. Marcus remains an annoyingly po-faced prig throughout, his lover a paragon of physical and intellectual perfection, whilst the venality of Uncle Caecilius is laid on with a trowel to the point of caricature. The rest of the cast - the wordly-wise courtesan, the straitlaced Roman official and his wastrel brother, etc, etc - never grow beyond stereotype.
Also rather heavy-handed are the clues the author strews about to indicate that Marcus isn't one for the girls, before finally producing the goods (so to speak). At which point it all seems rather an anti-climax (sorry). Oh, and there's one scene that did liven up the dull phase a bit - but for the wrong reason: young Marcus puts the wind up a bunch of battle-hardened Carthaginian soldiers attacking a detachment of Roman cavalry by running at them shouting a battle cry. With only a bit of DIY weapons training behind him, he kills their leader and the rest of them scuttle off. I just didn't believe it, even if Marcus does claim to have Mars on his side.
If Of Merchants and Heroes were a straight-up historical adventure yarn, none of this would matter particularly, but it comes garlanded with puffs likening it to Mary Renault's novels, which made me look forward to something more, or at least different. Not only does this sort of silly hype risk setting up the reader's expectations for possible disappointment, it's hardly fair to the author to deny him his own voice in this way. If I were Paul Waters, I'd rather be known as "the unique Paul Waters" than "a Mary Renault readalike". But I think the author needs to write a few more novels before that's likely to happen. On this showing, though, I wouldn't entirely rule it out.
For another opinion, see the Historical Novels Review's Editors' Choice for February 2008 (scroll down to end).
1 comment:
Thanks for a critical voice here. I was considering buying that book, though held off by the fact the MCs obviously is a teenager most of the book and I don't care to read about those. But now I'm sure not to buy it: a black and white coming of age story is not up my alley at all.
Post a Comment