Overall, this is a great tale that is expertly woven (by the author) using the history of ancient Rome and the romanticism of old-world adventure.
Even though we first meet Julia at her worst, being the spoiled princess she is, I love her character as her true personality is revealed as a woman who is ahead of her time. Instead of being the stereotypical woman of Rome in the 5th century, ready to do her duty and be sold off in marriage to some aristocrat to seal an alliance with the emperor, Julia wants to show her worth and prove how intelligent and useful she can be as an individual. Unfortunately for Julia, her father never saw her true worth before he died and her younger brother as new emperor is even worse.
I like the way the author has the two main characters, Alaric and Julia, meet for the first time, neither realizing who the other is. My interpretation of their first meeting is symbolic of how their relationship will unfold - neither really understanding who the other person truly is deep down until they are forced to finally trust one another.
Alaric’s background and his motivation for doing the things he has done and suffered through made me a fan girl from the very beginning to ‘mostly’ the end. He seems a god among men until the author reveals that even a legend like Alaric has his fears and struggles.
Julia just gets better as the story progresses, even in her moments of weakness and self-doubt.
The chemistry between Julia and Alaric is enough to make the pages smoke, from the very beginning of the story. The spice level in the book is not too angsty and just a few notches way beyond tame.
The supporting characters are a pleasure to get to know with just enough detail to keep them from being too one-dimensional or boring.
The book gives us plenty of ‘edge of the seat moments’; many we can deduce will pop up as expected, but just as many are totally unexpected. I think the unexpected twists and turns of the story kept me, as a reader, wholly invested in finishing the book.
I was hoping for a more satisfying ending, at least to this reader, but I suppose the author has given us enough to let our imaginations run as wild as we like.
In the last days of the Roman Empire, a desperate princess and a brutal Gothic warlord forge a dangerous alliance.
Julia, only daughter of the emperor of Rome, lives a life of excess and freedom. Wine, philosophy, and scandal—she revels in hedonism. But when her father dies and her teenage brother takes the throne, he will stop at nothing to seize control of both the empire and his wayward sister. And now Alaric of the Visigoths, a ferocious warrior who has battled Rome for years, has come to the capital to bargain for his homeland.
When Julia rebels against the marriage her brother has ordered her to accept, he responds by publicly punishing her lover in the Colosseum. Realizing how perilous her position is, Julia impulsively turns to Alaric—the empire’s sworn enemy, and the one man who can make Rome tremble. Julia must find a way to make an ally of Alaric, a man she can’t trust—a terrifying warlord with the power to bring both Julia and the empire to their knees—in an edgy, sexy cat-and-mouse game of attraction, defiance, and lust.
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