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 A Waste of Time. The Glowing Reviews are Obviously from Someone Connected to the Author Mar 17, 2010
I kept waiting for this book to make sense, but it never did. Passages that should have been a paragraph were 3 pages long and vice versa. It felt like the author decided a hundred pages in to just give up on this. You don't get to the time travel until 2/3 in and when you do it is DULL. The ending arrives out of nowhere and accomplishes nothing. Thumbs down, just like in ancient Rome.
 Needed a better editor Nov 05, 2009
The author paints a world in which Rome found a way to conquer without war and eventually grew to encompass the world as a single nation. Absolute power corrupts absolutely, so after being the sole government for a few generations the corruption and decay occurs that will lead to Rome's downfall through a series of dark and bloody revolutions. A central character discovers that Empathia, the philosophy that allowed Rome to bring people together without war was lifted from a condemned Jewish Rabbi called "Chesua". The hero goes back in time to save "Chesua" from being abducted by Rome so that he can finish his work and make Rome a country without corruption. The book ends with an unspecified time that could be our 1940's to 2040's in which there is a Christian Religion and leaves us there, as if that answers all questions and solves all problems.
If only there had been a good editor to say: "Hey man, tie these loose ends together. Give the audience a name or something that brings them back to the characters they started with and shows them that everything turned out okay. Maybe show the hero's wife and child living a safe and happy life. Or make this mom and child in the last chapter the main bad guy coming home from church with mom and growing up to be a good man." One sentence, or 4 well placed words could have turned this from an "Ee I read it" book to a "Man this was great, you've got to read this" book. There were great word pictures and wonderful concepts, but the ending caused the book to fall flat.
 Entertaining, could use some refinement Jun 09, 2009
SPOILERS CONTAINED HEREIN
This review is written more for those who have already read the book and who are looking for a brief analysis or, if you haven't read the book, the post-reading sentiments.
Aesthetically, the book carries an appeal that most closely parallels a mid-to-high-budget summer blockbuster. It's a quick read that provides a high level of entertainment for a short while. This analogy extends roughly to the characters, who are fairly consistently flat, yet interesting enough at the outset to keep the reader's attention for the duration of the read. The problem is that almost none of the characters undergo any significant changes. The prose reaches an almost Ayn Randian simplicity at times, and the dialogue can be extremely predictable. The plot, with some notable exceptions, fails at many points to surprise or even really intrigue.
With those things said, the concept is excellent, and the attention to detail is generally fairly good. I sincerely would have liked to have spent a bit more time exploring the alternative future that the book proposes, but I suppose one takes what one gets, and this book gives liberally enough. Those concepts and ideas that are explored are mapped in a way that is satisfying and not entirely unbelievable, if a bit simplistic.
The main reason I chose to rate this book only three stars is that I found the ideology and message to be internally frustrating. I found it most expedient at the end to simply assume that the book had no real message at all, though the entire book, from premise to execution, leads one to believe that some significant message might be somewhere in the making. The problem comes with defining it.
The book certainly cannot qualify as a Christian novel, as it seems to deny Christ's divinity and lacks all the usual bells and whistles that accompany such texts (miracles, supernatural agents, etc). It also makes a sort of dirty character of Paul. And the farthest this book stretches intellectual credulity is its bizarrely unbelievable concept of time travel (just stand somewhere and you'll be taken back in time?) It seems fairly obvious that if the space time continuum was continually shooting things backwards and forwards through time in various locations with the frequency described in this book that a) it would have been discovered shortly after humans developed social groups and b) we'd be living on a much weirder planet than the one we currently inhabit. I feel as though I must have missed something important about this in the novel. But I digress - the point is that the story is closer to a sci-fi movie than a religious tract.
However, it does espouse a sort of watered-down Christianity when it discusses "Empathia," which is essentially an ethical or moral code that the book suggests might have been the true message of Christ. Apart from the fact that the book itself demonstrates Empathia's flawed premise (love your enemies) as one that can only lead to death, it divorces that principle from the Christian concept of eternal salvation by eliminating Christ's divinity. Alone, it seems to me, Empathia is demonstrably suicidal.
As a result, Empathia seems significantly closer to a kind of hybrid L. Ron Hubbard-style science fiction theory than any religious or secular suggestion. I frankly can't see how it would challenge anyone's beliefs at all, nor how it could suggest a way of living that is any different from the type of (thankfully) watered-down religious practice that exists in most Western societies anyway. It strays between Christianity and secularism into a gray, touchy-feely region.
Yet neither does it reinforce the ways in which our present system outside the novel is any more moral than the alternate history suggested by the story, since Empathia is never adopted. The text suggests a strange dichotomy between our present existence and the one proposed therein, with a "solution" lurking somewhere in antiquity that is never enacted or explored fully by the authors, since clearly our own reality does not reflect the principles of described by Empathia, and they are never adopted by the book's alternative future either.
As I said, however, the book makes for an entertaining read, especially if you try not to parse the particulars of the message that the premise so clearly sets itself up for. I tend to think that perhaps it is better that way - moving between Christianity and secularism seems to suit the book well, although I would suggest that it leaves the reader a touch hollow at the end. Even so, with such a strong concept, the reader is at least called to engage these issues (which I find fascinating in their own right) and I'd recommend the book to the following kinds of readers:
1. Those interested in science fiction, especially alternative histories.
2. Those casually interested in religion and atheism.
3. Those looking for an entertaining, light read.
I hope this review was helpful - Enjoy!
2 of 3 found the following review helpful:
Wonderful premise... too bad the author didn't execute Apr 03, 2009
What if the Roman Empire had not fallen? What would the word today be like with a Roman Republic over two thousand years old? Super idea for a book. Too bad the author didn't really write it. More of a novella than a fully fleshed-out novel, the author is too busy preaching a fuzzy, socialist-Christian ethic to write a real book. Constant vague references to past places and events had me looking for a prequel that might have filled me in on the backstory. The final insult to the reader is an ending that makes no sense whatsoever. Save your money.
3 of 5 found the following review helpful:
Predictable and preachy Aug 18, 2008
As a fan of alternate history, I thought I might like this, especially given the many positive reviews I had read. I was quite disappointed with it.
The problem with this book is threefold:
1) Very little time is spent on just how the Roman Empire/Republic survived to the present day and what it's been doing since the time it should have fallen. When it is discussed, it is via character monologue, which is dry to the point of being almost unreadable.
2) I'm not sure if I was supposed to be surprised by the turn the book took, but I found it very predictable.
3) As I alluded to in the review title, is gets quite preachy. To elaborate on that would involve spoilers, so I'll have to leave it at that.
It did have its entertaining moments, and it was short enough that I don't feel I wasted too much time on it. I am glad I got it from the library, though, as I would have regretted buying it.
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