With the media making such a fuss over Dan Brown's upcoming The Lost Symbol, I thought some of my fellow fans of the early Roman Empire might like to know about the recent (August 2009) release of a thriller of our own, Daniel Levin's The Last Ember. While The Last Ember is patterned after the style of Da Vinci Code-author Dan Brown, it deals with Titus' sack of Jerusalem, the reputation of Flavius Josephus, and the mystery of Berenice, on the ancient side; nazis and other anti-semites, the museum/archaeologist controversy over artifacts, and revisionism, on the modern.I enjoyed the literary references, especially the use of sequential lines in the Aeneid as a type of password, and the infusion of data from various classics subfields, art history, and archaeology. The protagonist utilizes the author's own classical studies to flesh out a realistic, aborted doctoral career. The mystery to be solved sounds plausible, but I wish I'd studied Josephus seriously and knew more about the conflict between Jersusalem and Rome so I could say for sure. (Please be sure to post here if there are historical problems with Levin's depiction.)
There are minor historical imperfections: Levin seems to know more about the astronomy of the ancient Jews than the Greeks. Sometimes I wonder if half the fun of reading historical fiction isn't looking for such errors.
In all, if you're looking for well-crafted, thriller-type entertainment with a thick veneer of classics/Jewish history, try The Last Ember.
Comments
Thanks for the recommendation. The Last Ember just went on my reading list.
I’m quite positive that for some readers a lot of the fun is in spotting the errors! Fair enough too, it’s all part of the game.
I probably got that idea from your tweets.
It’s really a question of balance. Even one big mistake on the main topic might be enough to relegate a book to the don’t-read bin. Mistakes shouldn’t wreck the plausibility of the story line or make the reader feel historical research was only a minor concern.