When her village in Albion is sacked by the Roman general Vespasian, young Aislin is left without home and family. Determined to exact revenge, she travels to Rome, a sprawling city of wealth, decadence, and power. A “barbarian” in a “civilized” world, Aislin struggles to comprehend Roman ways. From a precarious hand-to-mouth existence on the streets, she becomes the mistress of a wealthy senator, but their child Faolan is born with a disability that renders him unworthy of life in the eyes of his father and other Romans. Imprisoned for her efforts to topple the Roman regime, Aislin learns of an alternate philosophy from her cellmate, the Judean known today as the apostle St. Paul. As the capital burns in the Great Fire of 64 AD, he bequeaths to her a mission that will take her to Jerusalem. There, Yohanan, son of Zakkai, has been striving to preserve the tradition of Hillel against the Zealots who advocate for a war of independence. Responding to the Judeans’ revolt, the Romans—again under the leadership of Vespasian—besiege Jerusalem, destroying the Second Temple and with it, the brand of Judean monotheism it represents. Yohanan takes on the mission of preserving what can be preserved, and of reinventing what must be reinvented.
Aislin is a young girl in Albion (Britannia) whose village, and everyone she loves, are killed when Roman general Vespasian attacks her village. She is determined to get vengeance and ends up in Rome. There she manages to get a sort of vengeance and then her road leads to Jerusalem. While there, she meets a teacher called Yohanan.
There are quite a lot of characters and several points of views in the book. But it was interesting to see how the people’s stories intertwined through the book.
I’m not a religious person and honestly don’t know much about anything related to it so I don’t really know how many, apart from few exceptions, of the characters were real people. But even though there is a religious theme in the book, it doesn’t come off as preachy.
I loved the writing style even if I missed the finer points of the religious themes. I loved Kaplan’s previous book By Fire, By Water so I was excited to read this, and I wasn’t disappointed.
