The Scourge of God by William Dietrich
Harper Collins Publishers
Published in 2005
ISBN 006073499X
334 Pages
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CHECKED OUT THE BOOK FROM MY PUBLIC LIBRARY.
Review/Rating:
5 out of 5
When Attila, king of the Huns, seeks to invade Rome, he threatens the end of civilization as Jonas knows it. In order to prevent Attila from invading the Eastern Roman Empire, they dispatch a group of ambassadors to Attila's camp in order to seek peace. However, some people in that group is in a plot to get a Hun warlord to assassinate their leader, and when Attila finds out about this, he keeps Jonas hostage while killing or sending away the others. As a hostage at the Hun camp, Jonas meets a beautiful, captured Roman woman, Illana, and falls in love with her, but the problem is that she is promised to the Hun warrior that saved her during the destruction of her city. Jonas, wanting to escape with Illana, tries to come up a plan to escape with a sword, Illana, a fool and his wife, and himself --- but it fails, leaving Illana in the clutches of a very angry Attila.
With the sword, they try to gather allies to help Rome and all of civilization to win against Attila, who threatens to destroy everything they hold dear. Will they succeed --- and will Jonas rescue his love?
Okay, first of all, I love history-fiction, so, of course, I'm going to give this book a good review. :) There also might be spoilers in my reviews, but please try to ignore that. :P
I admit that I didn't know much about this time in history, but even though it is fiction, I became interested through the characters, plot, and a lot of description. ;) Though, the description of the battle scene and what the corpses looked like --- I could have gone without that. :(
There is enough description in this book to drag you into that era and get an idea of how people might have lived during the time Attila might have been alive, and also it will get you thinking what would have happen if Attila had won those deciding battles/war in history. The politics in the book were kind of blech, but it makes up the boring politics with some very descriptive battles --- to the point you just read quick over --- and some history. I haven't verified how much is actually true, but the general outlook of the plot --- minus 3 or 4 of the main characters --- is pretty accurate to what happened in history, for what we actually know from that time period.
The book begins with a prologue, but in the book, they called it "introduction". In the introduction, it begins with Jonas telling you a very general summary of what had happened to him in the past and kind of what's happening with him now. Then, after that, it goes on about the affair of Honoria and the events that Jonas was hinting about in the introduction. So, basically, it goes from the present to the past and back to the present again and then a little bit, maybe, of what will happen in the future.
I think it was very descriptive --- I know I've said that like 200 million times, but, hey it is my review --- and didn't have that many or no holes in the plot or the time line of what was happening. The ending was an epilogue and made the plot a little bit more completed than if the author would have stopped with just what happened to Jonas and Illana. I suggest you don't read if you don't like history fiction or a little bit of gory details. :)
Other Reviews/Author Site:
William DietrichGoodreads: The Scourge of God by William DietrichLibrary Thing: The Scourge of God by William Dietrich
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