Italy, year 476. The remains of an almost legendary legion try to save the last Western emperor Romulus Augustulus from exile. Among them is a Roman officer suffering from memory loss and a warrior woman who recognizes him as the young soldier who once saved her from the devastation of Aquileia; but the truth is not so comfortable. During the escape, the young ex-emperor discovers an almost magical secret which will lead the story to converge with another, parallel history... in Britain.

The book sounds enticing but it didn't do much for me. For one thing, I found the (Italian) style very flat, something that can improve in translation. But above all I didn't share the finger-wagging moralism that tries to draw a parallel between the West of those times with the West of today, on the brink of destruction according to the author.

I won't get into philosophy here and don't want to teach history to an historian, but his theory that it was the wealth and corruption of Rome that drew barbarians to destroy her like they could destroy our world today sounds terribly simplistic and doesn't take into account the complexity of the world back then - among other things the immense movements of tribes that would have pushed the Goths into Italy whether it was a gilded civilization or an agglomerate of huts - and the moral progress of the world of today compared to then, its ability to self-regulate and its immense capacity to do good beside the bad. I don't like being told I'm a corrupt materialistic Westerner, I'm weird that way, you know.

Polemics aside, there is another big weakness in the book, I believe: Rome is corrupt, OK, but compared to what? Shouldn't we then be given some insight into the Goths' minds and ways of life, to understand these "good savages"? Nope. Odoacer and his Goths are simply the hand of Fate that smites the proud Rome. They are all murderers and pillagers and rapists and all speak unfailingly in a "guttural" voice. Even when we (rarely) see their point of view, they could be Saracens or Klingons for what we learn of them.

Especially distasteful is the Bad Bad Guy with a Scarred Face, who is so powerful that he has even a hand in the death of King Wortigern, and who is called "Wulfila". I don't know what the author was thinking, but the name kept calling to my mind a harmless bishop writing a book. It would be like describing a nice little old monk tending to his garden and calling him "Attila"...