Judging by the volume of historical fiction devoted to the Romans, there’s something endlessly fascinating to us about their blend of sophistication and savage cruelty. With the likes of Conn Iggulden and Simon Scarrow firmly entrenched in the history of Rome space, not to mention a number of new entrants, it is important for such new entrants to find themselves an interesting angle on the topic, and that’s certainly something that Ben Kane has done: while the great city of Rome, heart of the Republic, dominates the framework of this story, and features strongly in the action, by the end of the book our protagonists are half a world away and clearly destined for more adventures in future volumes.

Kane’s central characters are all outsiders to the world of Rome: Tarquinius, an escaped Etruscan slave, is a haruspex, or soothsayer, and a member of a race whose traditions have been forgotten or appropriated by the Romans; Brennus is a formidable Gaulish warrior (no, he doesn’t swig from a bottle of magic potion before a fight) forced to fight as a gladiator ; and Romulus is a young Roman, born in to slavery, the child of a rape, whose interesting parentage is likely to play a key role in future volumes. You don’t have to be a soothsayer to realise that circumstances will bring them together and that they’re going to have some adventures.

Kane has chosen the fertile ground of the First Triumvirate, which precedes the civil war between Caesar and Pompey and the effective death of the Roman Republic. With his fourth and final central character, Romulus’s twin sister Fabiola, he is able to keep Rome and its politics in the picture: they are separated when their owner decides to sell them, Romulus ending up as a gladiator, where he meets Brennus, and Fabiola ending up as a prostitute in Rome’s most expensive brothel, where she resolves to become the best at what she does so she can buy her freedom and find her brother. When she snags Brutus as a client, you know that she’s going to become embroiled in tumult of the Roman civil war.

The three warriors at the centre of the story, on the run from Rome, find themselves in the army put together by Crassus to invade the Parthian empire (a vast area encompassing much of modern-day Iran and Iraq) – it’s a catalogue of military misjudgments, which is important for the plot – because the defeated Roman legions, including our three heroes, are marched off to fight for the Parthians at the Eastern extremes of Parthian territory, which is really the beginning of the story.

The Forgotten Legion is an enjoyable romp with a clever twist, in that future volumes will see action perhaps as far afield as Mongolia and China, while the character of Fabiola will keep the Roman side of the storyline moving. The writing is effective and seldom interferes with the storytelling; to be critical, the fight scenes are undistinguished, but the battles are well handled. My one bugbear is the uncanny accuracy of Tarquinius’ soothsaying – which is so unerringly accurate that we can only presume Kane wants us to believe that you can read the future in a chicken’s entrails. My suspension of disbelief is not quite that willing, unfortunately, but I should stress it won’t stop me from seeking out the second volume of a series which looks like it could run and run. If you’re a Simon Scarrow fan, and can’t wait for the next adventures of Macro and Cato, you could do a lot worse than The Forgotten Legion.

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