Empress of the Seven Hills

May 23, 2012


I just finished reading Empress of the Seven Hills last night by Kate Quinn. One thing I will say is that this novel, really isn't a stand alone novel. This is a continuation of two other books that Kate Quinn has written. The first being Mistress of Rome and Daughter's of Rome. Daughter's of Rome was actually a prequel to Mistress of Rome and Empress of the Seven Hills is picks up after Mistress of Rome....Did you follow all of that?

It's been a while since I've read the other two books. Think back to when Border's was thriving. So, some of the things mentioned in this story left me a little confused since I couldn't remember some of the previous things mentioned.

The description of Rome during this time of Trajan and Hadrian is very well done. You can tell that Katie Quinn loves history and it shows in her story telling. The detail she applies to the story is very interesting. She does admit for this story, she did alter the time table to allow it to work for a character, but it wasn't drastic. She also portrays Rome, not in the romantic since, but in the way it was, the lack of morals that ran rampant in the city. Divorce happened a lot to further political pushes, black mail, bribery.

It was slow to get into reading this story however, since I had a hard time remembering the back-story of the characters, it wasn't till I was half way through did I finally feel invested in to the story. The time lapses did flow and wasn't choppy which was nice. Her previous two books, left me feeling like it was a Greek tragedy (though Roman), this one wasn't as much of a depressing read and actually left me wanting to know what will happen with a couple of these characters.

I'm on the fence about this book, since it did take me a while to get into it. It's a maybe.

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