Dominus

Dominus is essentially a series of short stories that are loosely connected through the lives of one family across time. They take place from the reign of Marcus Aurelius until Constantine. The first half of this book was very engaging, but about the 45% mark, I lost most of my interest.

The short story format of following generations of family has been done well before, but it is done to middling effect here. Saylor uses this format to dip in and out of various interesting parts of Roman history but does absolutely nothing to deepen any of his characters or provide them with characteristics or personality that differentiates them from one another. He also doesn't really do anything to examine how their lifestyles have changed over the centuries. They are always well off and they are always sculptors (by the way, over many generations, this powerful family of Romans never has to enter the military? I think I counted two of them that ever had to join the legions, which strikes me as woefully unrealistic. Of course, we don't get enough about any of them to know one way or another if they served). Every single patriarch of this family was utterly indistinguishable from the other. Which makes reading a chore, and the interest in the story only as good as whatever Roman Emperor they're discussing.

The first half-ish of this book followed a single character and his son, along with their friendship with the famous physician Galen, and their friendship and tenuous partnership with Marcus Aurelius and Commodus, respectively. This had enough of an arc that I was completely invested. Once Commodus leaves the stage though, all life leaves this book. What follows is a series of clips from the highlights of each of the most well-known emperors in this time period, then a time jump of a few years, some exposition about what happened in those years, 1-3 conversations with somebody being insane, then another time jump. After every time jump or two, you get introduced to the next generation, the same as the old generation.

If you want to just have a nice series of short stories that give you more context and information about Ancient Roman Emperors, then this will be pretty enjoyable. But overall it just felt like a giant montage. I admire how much history Saylor is trying to cover here, but maybe he was trying to do too much.

Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for a free copy in exchange for an honest review!