![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
A Very Roman Christmas
Feb. 6th, 2012 11:35 pmJul 2011
Saturnalia - Lindsey Davis - Arrow, 2008
* * * *
To me, the Falco books are essentially science fiction novels. Just as Charles Stross and others imagine an alien landscape and then populate it with people whose motives and speech patterns we can recognise and understand, so Davis does with the equally alien setting of first century Rome and her characteristically British-speaking and -acting characters. Falco in particular shows that peculiar British combination of frustration with the social stratification of his society and a fatalism about it ever changing that suggests that he is more content than he seems.
Another Britishism, and one of the delights of the series, is the author’s cynical take (through the eyes of her embittered hero) on traditions and mores, and this is particularly evident in this story. Falco has reason to be rebarbative because it is Saturnalia, often described as the Roman equivalent of Christmas. There is certainly much fun to be had in the parallels - the tired civic rituals, the enforced bonhomie, the family tensions - particularly when the latter have been hiked a notch by the disappearance of Falco’s brother-in-law Justinus after Veleda, a Gallic princess with whom he had a fling in an earlier book, is brought as a captive to Rome. As Veleda is on the run, having escaped house arrest and apparently murdered a prominent senator’s son, Justinus’ parents and his aggrieved wife Claudia Rufina fear scandal and drag Falco from his own familial preparations (rather to his relief) to investigate.
( Read more... )
Saturnalia - Lindsey Davis - Arrow, 2008
* * * *
To me, the Falco books are essentially science fiction novels. Just as Charles Stross and others imagine an alien landscape and then populate it with people whose motives and speech patterns we can recognise and understand, so Davis does with the equally alien setting of first century Rome and her characteristically British-speaking and -acting characters. Falco in particular shows that peculiar British combination of frustration with the social stratification of his society and a fatalism about it ever changing that suggests that he is more content than he seems.
Another Britishism, and one of the delights of the series, is the author’s cynical take (through the eyes of her embittered hero) on traditions and mores, and this is particularly evident in this story. Falco has reason to be rebarbative because it is Saturnalia, often described as the Roman equivalent of Christmas. There is certainly much fun to be had in the parallels - the tired civic rituals, the enforced bonhomie, the family tensions - particularly when the latter have been hiked a notch by the disappearance of Falco’s brother-in-law Justinus after Veleda, a Gallic princess with whom he had a fling in an earlier book, is brought as a captive to Rome. As Veleda is on the run, having escaped house arrest and apparently murdered a prominent senator’s son, Justinus’ parents and his aggrieved wife Claudia Rufina fear scandal and drag Falco from his own familial preparations (rather to his relief) to investigate.
( Read more... )