Imperious

Trying to get up to speed with my reading of fiction. In broad terms I'm all for slow reading, but I think I've tended to take this to extremes of late. So I treated myself to Robert Harris's Imperium, of which I'd heard great things from reviewers relating to pace and readability. They were not wrong. Hardly put it down in the day and a half it took me to read it. Who'd have thought the rise to power of one Marcus Tullius Cicero could have been rendered quite so gripping? Well, I would, for one. Let's face it, the Romans were such nasty types that pretty much everything they got up to makes for a lurid read. But the fact that Mr Harris actually gets the job done with such vigour and insight is to be applauded loudly.

Popular fiction at its best.