Conn Iggulden's "Emperor" is stunning. It begins with hints of a mystery and continues as a galvanizing historical thriller. Two boys, two friends, Gaius and Marcus, are growing up on the country estate of a Roman senator. 

As they mature into young men and hardened fighters, Gaius' patrician father, Julius, is killed during a slave uprising and the 15-year-old takes his place in the Senate and as head of the family. Protected by an uncle, the general and Roman consul Marius, Gaius cannot avoid the poisonous politics of late-Republican Rome or the deadly contention between Marius and the rival consul, Sulla. 

By the end, Marius is dead, Marcus is soldiering in Macedonia and Gaius (his life spared by Sulla) is in flight, leaving his new bride behind. We know that he will fight another day. His name, and that of his friend, revealed close to the end, will be familiar to all.

Words like "brilliant," "sumptuous" and "enchanting" jostle to be used, but scarcely convey the way Iggulden brings the schoolbook tale to life, or the compelling depictions of battle, treachery and everyday detail in a precarious world well lost but vividly re-created. Iggulden knows that history derives from "story." And this story has barely begun. "The Gates of Rome" is its first, exhilarating, installment. Don't miss it.

Delacorte Press: 368 pp., $24.95 

Review by Eugen Weber a contributing writer to Book Review. 

Los Angeles Times: The senator from ancient Rome is recognized ... 
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