The Bottom Line
Hannibal's Children, by Historical fiction writer John Maddox Roberts, is the first volume of a story about how Rome regains its empire after Hannibal -- contrary-to-fact -- won the Second Punic War.
Pros
- Great Roman military detail
- Plausible alternative history
- Basic story is interesting
Cons
- Too little attention to characters
- Not really a complete story
- Only two women and almost identical
Description
- Hannibal's Children takes place a century after the war between Rome and Carthage led by Hannibal.
- Rome, in exile, has continued to practice its political and military traditions.
- Roman soldiers sent by the senate spy on Carthage and Egypt.
- Archimedes survived and set up a school for inventors in Alexandria.
- The patrician Roman soldiers use their inventions to fight Hannibal successor's attack on Egypt.
- The plebeian Romans join Hannibal's successor and show him Roman military might.
- Meanwhile the Senate back in "Rome" sends its own legions to retake the once lost Rome.
- Both Egypt and Carthage have kings whose sisters are scheming to take the throne.
- One of the two women goes after the patrician Roman and the other after the plebeian Roman soldier.
- The story doesn't stand well on its own but looks to its sequel.
Guide Review - Review - Hannibal's Children
The alternate world of Hannibal's Children, by John Maddox Roberts, makes a lot of sense. Hannibal was winning the Second Punic War and the Romans counted Hannibal's victory at Cannae as the worst defeat of the Roman Republic, so the story that the Romans were expelled from Italy by Hannibal is plausible. And they probably would have kept up their training and preparation for getting their own back, just as Roberts depicts. However, a little more attention to characters and even transitions between scenes would have helped immensely with the readability of Hannibal's Children.
Like other military fiction written with an eye to Hollywood, the story is bigger than life and filled with exquisite costumes and choreographically-trained legions.
