Soldier of Rome: The Legionary by James Mace

I like the Romans. Hell, I love the Romans. Who needs Snookie when you've got Elagabalus, an early third century emperor who was killed by his granny in favor of another grandson? Good stuff.

So, I pick up The Legionary, despite my rule about books with terrible covers (free book freeloader here) and leave it in the ebook TBR pile. Now, in the meantime I've started collecting Roman coins, and that spurred me to read this book.

We know what the book is about: Rome waging war in Germania. A third of the way in, the army is moving in to defeat the traitorous Arminius. For a good portion of the first third, we are following our hero, Artorius, as he trains to become a soldier. Due to the fact that there are massive info dumps (both text and dialog), this can drag on for a while. Having said that, there is a lot of information that you need to understand, and a lot of information that you may want to learn, and you will get it from the first section of this book. The information about Roman army structure, training methods, etc., is presented didactically. Without making the book incredibly long, this may have been the best way to present it. To say I was riveted to the page while absorbing it may be overkill, but I'm glad to have learned it.

TWO WEEKS LATER:
Alright, I finished it, and by that I mean I skimmed the last 20% of the book (mainly reading the dialog (maybe I'm back to a screenplay state of mind?)). Here's the rub: I'm not sure what the rub is. It seems like there was a fourth act to the book, when it could have ended naturally after the climax. This is the first book in (to date) a four-book series, so the fourth act could have been the beginning of the second book (and maybe it is).

Here's my rub: I'm not sure how to rate this book. Because I'm a Roman fan, I liked it, but the battle scenes went on, etc. If you like battle scenes, you may love it. I won't give this book a bad rating because I know how difficult it is to write a book. (Mace clearly knows his stuff. Shoot, from his website it looks like he is a Roman re-enactor.) And I may be spoiled by Bernard Cornwell's Saxon Chronicles, which are wonderful.

Overall: stop hatin', haters. The history is good (to my limited knowledge) and there's a lot of good information here. At some point I'll pick up the next book in the series.

SIDE NOTE:
I think he could improve the product with a better cover, but, then again, I'm a cover whore. I took a stab at it using Powerpoint, and I don't think it turned out terribly.