Book Review - The Parthian

The Parthian by Peter Darman

Review by Jacqui Slaney

This is another book that I came across by accident, not an author I know, but the story line sounded interesting.

 It is a story of a Parthian prince Pacorus who fights against Rome when they start to come close to the Parthian empire. After a series of victories Pacorus and his men are and sent to Italy to live out the rest of their days as slaves. But are saved from this by the arrival of Spartacus and his slave army, the story then follows the battles they fight together towards they hope of eventual freedom from Rome.

There is certainly a lot of action in the story, and the scenes were detailed but it was a slow start and for quite a while I had to resist giving up on the story as I did not like the main character at all. But I persevered with it, and I gradually came to like Pacorus. The writer had tried to show the characters’ development from a spoilt pampered prince, to a leader of men and he did handle this well. There are very good descriptions of the friendships he made and the love that he found and all the battle scenes are graphic and well written.

On the down side of the book, there are numerous grammatical errors. This can be annoying especially when you are struggling with a slow book, as they can become too much of a barrier to get over.  Some of the continual descriptions of how good a horseman Pacorus was and what Gallia looked like is also slightly tedious and it is also not a totally accurate historical novel either.

Yes there are a few down sides to this book, but please don’t let all this put you off a good read.

 Ok so it is not historically accurate, but the writer doesn’t claim this novel to be such. The writer has researched the background to the events of the time, but has just used some licence in their portrayal in this book. Yes there is bad grammar, but speaking for myself I was able to ignore these errors in the end, except thinking now and then – why on earth wasn’t  there a proof reader for this book!

I am glad I stuck with the story, which I enjoyed in the end and have now actually bought the second in the series, so fingers crossed a proof reader was used for this one.

7out of 10