Experience The October Horse (Masters Of Rome #6) Compiled By Colleen McCullough Exhibited In Leaflet

acabei o livro!!!
meses para acabar este calhamaço, Poderia ter sido menos, mas o tempo livre tornouse mais escasso,
Livros de mil páginas há muitos, Mas livros de mil páginas tão densos quanto os da saga do Primeiro Homem de Roma, não.
Colleen McCullough oferecenos não uma grande lição de História mas sim uma tese incrivelmente detalhada dos últimos anos da República Romana.
Chegar a este quaseúltimo romance é como um sonho concretizado McCullough acabou por ceder aos pedidos dos fãs e escreveu mais um livro na série.

“O Cavalo de Outubro” cumpre, como seria de esperar, o seu papel como um dos romances historicamente mais correctos e atentos que é possível encontrar e um enorme entretenimento.
Aliás, apesar da minha falta de tempo para leituras, foime muitas vezes difícil largar o livro e, se não me tivesse agarrado dessa forma, teria sido impossível terminálo ainda este ano.


Já não tenho muitas palavras para além da minha profunda lealdade a esta série histórica.
Todos os livros históricos deviam ser assim, todos,

É certo que alguns defeitos foram mais evidentes aqui, mais do que em livros anteriores,
Por exemplo, Júlio César: McCullough obviamente sonhou todas as noites com este homem, porque não há um único defeito nele.
Apesar de todos os seus feitos serem reais, custa a crer que alguém neste mundo seja tão incrivelmente perfeito.
Mesmo assim, apesar das qualidades exageradas, reconheço que vêlo triunfar é o que em parte torna a leitura tão exaltante e é o que torna a sua morte tão emocionante.

Gaio Octávio, herdeiro de César e futuro primeiro Imperador parece seguir as mesmas pisadas do pai, com uma exaltação exagerada do seu carácter.
Colleen McCullough tem, obviamente, alguma dificuldade em não se embasbacar pelos seus protagonistas, e o cansaço é tão óbvio que decide tornar Octávio uma mera cópia do seu adorado César.
Apenas nas ltimas páginas surge um Octávio diferente, mais ele próprio, mas não o suficiente.

Aliás, depois da morte de César, tornase óbvio um certo, . . Não quero chamar desinteresse, mas talvez dificuldade em manter o balanço entre romance e História.
O livro tornase pouco mais do que uma dissertação sobre as consequências da morte do grande homem e termina com a vingança do seu herdeiro concretizada, e as sementes do Império.


Enfim, não obstante, tenho mesmo pena de chegar ao fim, Se fosse para uma ilha, seria esta série que levaria comigo, There is very little that hasn't already been said about McCullough's phenomenal "Masters of Rome" series, Meticulously researched and detailed, each is an entertaining, engaging and educational experience, The October Horse spans Caesar's time in Egypt and his murder sob!, through the warring and deaths of most, if not all, of his assassins inBC.
Just one tome remains to complete the series, and I'm already quite sad about it, The amount of anxiety I felt in the pages leading up to Caesar's death was an unsettling and new experience for me I wonder whether any other readers had a similar reaction.
I've read many other historical works in which the reader knows disaster is coming and aches to change history before it is revealed in terrible detail on the page, but I was nevertheless surprised at how affecting it was.
This is supposedly the last of the Masters of Rome books, In essence, with the battle of Philippi ending inBC, this covers the fall of the old Roman Republic.


The start of the book covers the attempts to assassinate Julius Caesar begin to take root.
Caesar's clemency and desire to bring Rome back to the old ways is doomed to failure, The ruling class is unwilling and incapable of meeting Caesar's vision, In order to protect their own varied powers and privileges, they decide to form a vast conspiracy to kill Caesar.


McCullough does a great job of explaining WHY Caesar was trying to do, It is likely that once Julius was done "fixing" the Republic, he would have retired much like Sulla with a restoration of the Republic with "updated" laws factoring in that

Rome was now an Empire.


She also does a great job of explaining the other side of the argument from Cato and Cicero, to Marc Antony and Brutus.
The act and the resulting fallout is also very well explained, I enjoyed this volume since it has much to do with the rise of Octavian, He is able to see that the Republic Julius wished over is effectively over, There must be a new way of doing things,

Octavian's reptilian mind is set on not only destroying all of Caesar's enemies but also securing for himself ultimate power.
I thought it odd to finish the story with Antony not yet in Egypt since the final bell for the Republic had not yet tolled.
I find that there is another volume after this called "Antony and Cleopatra", which I assume will finish out the story.


I do not know whether McCullough "jumped the gun" with declaring this the final volume and then later finishing the series with the aforementioned sequel, but the abrupt ending of a story that is not fully finished is mildly irritating.


However, this is a superb story, With the death of Caesar and the rise of a new Caesar, the transition from Republic to Empire has begun.
As I have purchased the "final" final book, I shall read and finish it soon, I highly recommend this entire series, If you are not terribly knowledgeable about the fall of the Republic, you can mend your ignorance with this entertaining historical fiction series.
I loved every minute of it and would recommend this to anyone with an interest for this period.
SPOILER ALERT: JULIUS CAESAR GETS ASSASSINATED,

Sorry, I felt like I needed to get that out of the way first, What more can I say about Colleen McCullough and this masterpiece of a series that I haven't already The historicity, the attention to detail, the astounding depth of the characters all make The October Horse on par with the best works of historical fiction.


Chronologically, this takes us from Caesar's pursuit of Pompey following his crushing victory at the Battle of Pharsalus to the ultimate suicide of the chief conspirator and douchebag extraordinaire Gaius Cassius Longinus.
Along the way, we witness the muchromanticized affair between Caesar and Cleopatra, the profound restructuring of Roman society in Caesar's image, and the meteoric rise of Rome's first emperor: Gauis Octavianus Augustus Caesar.


Of all the things I adored about this book, the most salient was probably the way McCullough portrayed the relationship between Octavian and his best friend: Marcus Agrippa.
Where Caesar was an icecold machine who withheld emotional intimacy from even his closest lovers, Octavian never shied away from expressing love and adoration for Agrippa.


All too often, characterizations of male relationships fall into two frustratingly reductive categories:
"Bromances" defined by machismo and bereft of any emotional depth
Laughably stereotypical gay relationships that only serve to further some plot point or serve as
comedic relief

In The October Horse, McCullough offers a refreshing alternative: an unexpected yet natural friendship between two men defined by their abiding, platonic love for one another.


That being said, the relationship between Octavian and Agrippa remains a relatively minor component of the larger plot.
It just really stood out to me and I wanted to praise McCullough for portraying male friendships not as they are, but rather as they ought to be.
With her renowned storytelling gifts in full force, Colleen McCullough delivers a breathtaking novel that is both grand in scope and vivid in detail and proves once again why she is the top historical novelist of our time.


In the last days of the Roman Republic, Gaius Julius Caesar is both adored and despised but his rule is unshakable.
Forced by civil war to leave his beguiling mistress Cleopatra, Caesar turns his eye to the future: who is to inherit the throne of Roman power But in the shadows of the empire, the talk is of murder.
Who among his associates has the cunning and skill to fell the fierce leader and brave the dangerous consequences of that cataclysmic act This historical fiction series is worth reading stick with it.
The reader gets the nonfiction, the real characters set in the author's personal creative landscape where she recreates the characters and invents a few fictional ones in a setting that could make this a compelling read.
You will meet the young Octavian who changes dramatically into this new person after his adoptive father's Julius Caesar death.
Octavian grows and rises into the Emperor Augustus Caesar,
The story of Julius Caesar shines through the plot to kill him and then the actual murder the death the reader would have heard several times before but this is the author's adaptation and we are drawn in.
Aware of the rivalry between Octavius and Mark Anthony, the reader wonders how will she present this in the shadow of Caesar's death, of suspicion and animosity, and fear that he might be next.

If you know the story of Julius Caesar, you know that his first wife was Cornelia and their daughter was Julia who became the fourth wife of Pompey.

Colleen McCullough's 'fictional' name for Cornelia is Cinnilla, The reader is drawn into the setting with Caesar and Cleopatra lying in bed, Cleopatra is six months pregnant, Caesar says' "I love you as my wife, my daughter, my mother, my aunt, "

Then he takes her to see the results of a burned Alexandria, He assures her that all the books destroyed would be replaced, Cleopatra was more distraught over the loss of the books that the heartwrenching spectacle of all the starving women and children.
Vegetation burned, waterfalls dried up but sculptures and paintings were saved,

Caesar wanted Cleopatra to know what was important in the rebuilding Alexandria, " . Only when Alexandria's people are served can you spend money on public buildings and temples, "

He continued, " . And when I have destroyed what I have left behind will benefit future generations in far greater measure than the damage I did, the lives I ended or ruined.
"

Such beautiful writing excused the mistakes here and there,

"Do you think, Cleopatra, that I don't see in my mind's eye the sum total of devastation and upheavel I've caused Do you think I don't grieve.
I say again, Pharoah rule your subjects with love, and never forget that it is only an accident of birth that makes you different from one of those women picking through the debris of this shattered city.
You deem it AmunRa who put you in your skin, . I know it was an accident of fate, "
What ever Caesar did was out of conscious decision,

Here, the author describes the scene with passion, The beauty of her dialoguing, The reader understands who Caesar is, Cleopatra understands too. The dialogue is sweeping and rich with information that brings the scenes to life, describing the manner in which Caesar delegated as "commanderinchief", and he made his imprint wherever he went and the people listened and obeyed with respect.


McCullough knows the stories and all the characters seem to be in her head, Some sentences are confusing and clumsy making the paragraph difficult to follow,
Example:
"Brutus was a particularly difficult problem for Caesar, who had taken him under his wing after Parsalus, out of affection for his mother, Servilia, and out of guilt of breaking Brutus's engagement to Julia in order to ensnare Pompey it had broken Brutus's heart, as Caesar well knew.
But, thought Calvinius, Caesar hadn't the slightest idea what kind of man Brutus is when he took pity on him after Pharsalus.
He left a youth. He picked up the relationship twelve years later,
McCullough is trying to tell us that Brutus is a now a wimp,

This sentence:
"Unaware that a pimply youth now a pimply man of thirtysix, was a coward on a battlefield and a lion when it came to defending his staggering fortune.
"
It disrupted the flow of the narrative for me as I attempted to fix it,
That night sleepless on Cleopatra's enormous goosedown bed, her warmth tucked against him in the mild chill of Alexandria's socalled winter, Caesar thought about the day, the month, the year.
. etc etc. Then she adds . . And a business proposition from a queen determined to save her people in the only way she believed they could be saved, by conceiving the son of a god.
Believing that he, Caesar was that god, Bizarre. Alien.


However McCullough's dialogue is rich and masterful and there lies her strength in storytelling.


Prepare for a very long read and for me personally, I tried to decipher what was real and what wasn't in the midst of the clumsy sentence structure Was this work a rushed piece It is a longer wider journey covering so many characters actually too many and not as simple to figure out as in sitelinkCleopatra's Daughter by Michelle Moran.
This historical novel spurred me to study the history behind her writing, I think it all depends on when you read a book and for me, McCullough's book sitelinkCaesar's Women was a challenge as I've already convinced myself of the history of Caesar.
I enjoyed her book, sitelinkThe First Man in Rome but I read it about ten years ago and I was a lot more patient and again this spurred me on to looking for the history, the facts having created an impressive scene in my mind.


McCullough covered Roman politics weaving this within the drama of the day, which makes a good introduction to that era, to Rome for young readers probably high school.
This was published in.
I commend Colleen McCulloughand this production,

A good nonfiction is A J Langguth's sitelinkA Noise of War: Caesar, Pompey, Octavian amp the Struggle for Rome.
.