The Exiled: A powerful novel of ambition and treachery

Description

A.D. 79. Parthia is gripped by civil war. One king vying for the throne, desperate for help, welcomes an alliance from an unlikely source: a man claiming to be Nero, the dethroned Roman emperor. Meanwhile, young Gaius wishes he could spend his summer on the Bay of Naples amongst his books. Instead Pliny, the famous admiral, has sent him to befriend the nephew of Ulpius, the mysterious blind senator from Spain. A man Pliny does not trust. But when a Parthian hostage is nearly killed, days before Parthian emissaries are expected, and as rumours of the False Nero entering the land reaches Rome, Gaius and Pliny race to learn how these events are connected. As the political intrigue comes to a head, something happens that only the mysterious clairvoyant Sybil could have foreseen: Mount Vesuvius erupts, and black ash fills the sky...

David Barbaree is a lawyer and a graduate of the Curtis Brown Creative Writing School. He lives in Toronto with his wife and daughter.

Bravely tackles the internecine war which disrupted the Parthian Empire * SHOTS Magazine * The multi narrator approach works well both in terms of pace and perspective * Journal of Classics * An exciting, twisty read of ruthlessness and disaster * Sunday Sport * We have plots and sub plots; we have a maelstrom of earthquakes and eruptions; and we even have room for a few love scenes * Journal of Classics * The Exiled provides an entertaining historical romp around ancient Rome and it's provinces, with interesting characters, a complex plot and bags of intrigue, leaving a number of 'what ifs' to linger in your mind after turning the final page * Crime Review *