Admittedly the sex scenes are not described in detail, but there's plenty of inference about perversions and adultery and worse. I didn't need reminding every page how awful it was. I have no idea why the author felt the need to go into quite so much gory detail: we all know Ancient Rome was corrupt. But being a Christian at this stage of the Roman Empire was punishable by death, so she lets people assume she's a Jew (considered bad enough, but an accident of birth rather than a choice).īut given the idea, the main plot is fairly predictable, and the sub-plots contain yet more appalling violence (with Atretes in the arena) as well as grotesque descriptions of the corruptions that Julia and her brother Marcus indulge in. She manages to retain her purity despite plenty of temptation, she's loyal and faithful as a servant, and she longs to tell the family about Jesus. Hadassah is the one bright spark in a corrupt and greedy household. To be fair to the author, the plot is a good idea. Meanwhile Atretes, hero of the second chapter, becomes a gladiator. Hadassah, the Jewish Christian girl who loses her family in the fall of Jerusalem, is sold as a slave: she ends up as maid to the rich and pampered Lady Julia. At least there was some plot from the third chapter onwards.
My friend assured me the book got better, and I read many raving reviews at Amazon USA, so I kept going. I was, as they say in the USA, 'grossed out'. I skimmed as much as I could, then found the second chapter every bit as bad: this time it focussed on a battle in Germany, with yet more gratuitous violence. A horrific background, and unfortunately the author decided to let us in on scenes of carnage and destruction, with gruesomely sickening detail. It takes place in Jerusalem, during its destruction in the 1st century. Indeed, I nearly gave up after the first chapter.
:origin()/pre00/6709/th/pre/i/2015/106/e/4/wip_genderbent_sebastian_michaelis_by_dragonfly_megz-d7xirti.jpg "a voice in the wind hadassah")
She writes Christian historical fiction, and a friend lent it to me, along with the two sequels, saying she thought I would like it. This is the first novel I've read by Francine Rivers.
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