A Roman-era British thriller/mystery; not as fun as , because the voice is too earnest and certain. The main character is a young woman who runs the family roadhouse in northern Britannia while her brother is off in the army; she's bright and organized and determined to stay, but she isn't subtle. Nor are her opponents, the defeated Britons yearning to kick out the invaders and restore the old ways. There are nods given to complex cultural and personal loyalties, but mostly it's a young person's adventure novel.
From the author's afterword, some of this is intentional; her main character is a settler and settlers probably aren't, as a rule, given to double-guessing themselves.
The Romans, like empire-builders through the ages, thought they had an absolute right to colonise wherever they chose, and were certain they were benefiting the peoples they conquered.
Mmmm, always so topical. I found myself kind of balanced between the assumption that invaders, especially slaveholding ones, are obviously the Bad Guys, and seeing this (as I expect anyone British would) with the hindsight of hundreds of years of prosperous Romano-Britons, and a mantle of empire patched together as an inheritance.
ISBN: 1590580753
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