Pompeii - Robert Harris

2003; 346 pages. New Author? : No. Genres : Historical fiction, Mystery, Action. Overall Rating : 7*/10.

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The aqueduct-carried water at Misenum has gone bad - it's killing the fish and reeks of sulfur (sulfide, actually). Something has happened upstream and it's up to Attilius, the new aquarius (aqueduct engineer) to find it and fix it. Could it have anything to do with a smoldering Mt. Vesuvius? Probably not, since Pompeii, at the base of the volcano, reports that their water is just fine.

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What's To Like...

Our hero is an engineer, how kewl is that?! The co-star is a historical figure - Pliny the Elder - and to a certain degree, he steals the show. He's been a soldier and a statesman; he's still a scientist an admiral, and a writer. And he's about to lock horns with Mother Nature. Who will win?

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Best of all, Robert Harris gives you a wonderful "feel" for life in the ancient Roman Empire. From the water clocks and water organs to the home life and marketplaces, you really do get a sense of "being there". Even the anachronistic candles can be forgiven.

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You get a storyline with each genre. There is fun with aqueducts for the Historical Fiction. The mystery is what has happened to Exomnius, Attilius' predecessor, who vanished one day without a trace. And the action of course is Vesuvius herself. She's getting ready to blow. Harris deftly ties all these lines together for a coherent story.

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Kewl New Words...

Pergola : an arbor with a framework that supports climbing plants. Hypocaust : an ancient Roman system of central heating. Dyspeptic : morose. Centuriated : pertaining to a Roman practice of dividing up the countryside around a newly established colony into (100) square lots and giving them to the colonists. Demobbed : demobilized. Here : demobbed legionaires. Afflatus : the blowing on someone or something by air or other vapors.

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Excerpts...

Attilius had no time for gods. Boys with wings on their feet, women riding dolphins, graybeards hurling bolts of lightning off the tops of mountains in fits of temper - these were stories for children, not men. He placed faith instead in stones and water, and in the daily miracle that came from mixing two parts of slaked lime to five parts puteolanum - the local red sand - conjuring up a substance that would set underwater with a consistency harder than rock. (pg. 8)

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"Do you see that group of figures, reading in the shade beside the pool? They are philosophers." Torquatus found this very funny. "Some men breed birds as a pastime, others have dogs. The senator keeps philosophers!"

"And what species are these philosophers?"

"Followers of Epicurus. According to Cascus, they hold that man is mortal, the gods are indifferent to his fate, and therefore the only thing to do in life is enjoy oneself."

"I could have told him that for nothing." (pg. 91)

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Poor old Petronius. Too funny and stylish for his own good. In the end, Nero, suspecting his own imperial majesty was being subtly mocked, had eyed him for one last time through his emerald monocle and had ordered him to kill himself. But Petronius had succeeded in turning even that into a joke - opening his veins at the start of a dinner in his house at Cumae, then binding them to eat and to gossip with his friends, then opening them again, then binding them, and so on, as he gradually ebbed away. His last conscious act had been to break a fluorspar wine-dipper worth 300,000 sesterces, which the emperor had been expecting to inherit. That was style. That was taste. (pg 147)

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"May the gods protect us from an honest man." (pg. 209)

Pompeii is not Robert Harris' greatest book. (*) There are problems with each storyline/genre. The characters are 2-dimensional in the Aqueduct plotline. Attilius is pathetically good, and the two bad guys are pathetically evil. This would make it a good YA book, except that there is an obsession with genitalia throughout.

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The mystery of Epomnius is straightforward and dull. The action involving Mt. Vesuvius is great, but only gets going with 80 pages left. There is an exciting ending, but it is much too short. There's even some romance, but it's not well-developed at all.

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Still, as a piece of historical fiction, Pompeii is quite good. I enjoyed the Roman setting, the detailed science of Vesuvius erupting, and the biographical unfolding of Pliny's last days.

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Maybe Robert Harris reached these same conclusions, as presently he is working on Book 3 of a trilogy about Cicero. The first two books - Imperium (2006) and Conspirata (2009) are already out, but they haven't shown up at the used-book store yet. We'll give Pompeii 7 Stars - more if you're reading it for the History; less if you're reading it as a Mystery/Thriller.

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(*) : That would be Fatherland, a fantastic Alt-History thriller set in a world where Hitler won WW2. Highly recommended, and reviewed here.