She’s eager to be a real wife, and she asks questions all the time. For her, everything is exciting, everything brand new. Her wonder infects the reader, and though from the beginning she is portrayed as the likely cause of so many deaths, you find yourself liking her. It has never been enough to tame her wildness, she loves to ride horses, and instead of looking down on everything that she encounters as being lesser than Rome she sees it all as exciting and fascinating. Soon we meet Valeria, who, as a Senator’s daughter, has been strictly raised on the ideals of a Roman Matron: propriety, nobility, respect. It begins with a battle, and the capture of a Scotti prince who is made a slave by the Roman who defeated him. In the main chapters, the stories that the witnesses tell coalesce together, and Draco is carried away by what he thinks most likely happened, and we have the book proper. We listen a little to their tale, to the narration that explains the importance of what we are about to see. In between the main story he.and the reader.sit down with various witnesses, solders, slaves, even a captured druid.

We follow Draco, but not in the usual way. For his wife-to-be, Valeria, it is an adventure, a place where she may become a woman and become herself.įor Arden Caratacus, a Scotti chieftain, it is a blight that reminds him of Rome‘s love of subjugation.Īnd for Inspector Draco, it is the place of a story that he must slowly piece together, a mystery and a tragedy that he must decide the cause of. Home of the famous Petriana Cavalry, a force that he, briefly is able to assume command of, it is the farthest outpost of the Roman empire, a place rife with the chance for a low born man to become a great one.įor Lucius Marcus Flavius it is a chance to make his military mark and please his father.even if it means unseating Galba from command and taking over, thanks to the intervention of his future father-in-law. (reviewed by Cindy Lynn Speer APR 23, 2004)įor Galba Brassidias, a Roman cavalryman, Hadrian’s wall is the culmination of his ambitions.

Hadrian's Wall by William Dietrich