Review: Clash of Eagles by Alan Smale

Blurb:

Perfect for fans of action-adventure and historical fiction—including novels by such authors as Bernard Cornwell, Steve Berry, Naomi Novik, and Harry Turtledove—this stunning work of alternate history imagines a world in which the Roman Empire has not fallen and the North American continent has just been discovered. In the year 1218 AD, transported by Norse longboats, a Roman legion crosses the great ocean, enters an endless wilderness, and faces a cataclysmic clash of worlds, cultures, and warriors.

Ever hungry for land and gold, the Emperor has sent Praetor Gaius Marcellinus and the 33rd Roman Legion into the newly discovered lands of North America. Marcellinus and his men expect easy victory over the native inhabitants, but on the shores of a vast river the Legion clashes with a unique civilization armed with weapons and strategies no Roman has ever imagined.

Forced to watch his vaunted force massacred by a surprisingly tenacious enemy, Marcellinus is spared by his captors and kept alive for his military knowledge. As he recovers and learns more about these proud people, he can’t help but be drawn into their society, forming an uneasy friendship with the denizens of the city-state of Cahokia. But threats—both Roman and Native—promise to assail his newfound kin, and Marcellinus will struggle to keep the peace while the rest of the continent surges toward certain conflict.

Review:

This book is sort of nostalgic for me. Read through it first last year, yet even then, it felt like a lifetime ago. Guess reading an unhealthy amount of books since then has made it appear that way. A few weeks after reading “Clash of Eagles”, I read the rest of the series. This book perfectly encapsulates what the Roman Empire could have looked like if it had never fallen, and how it would turn out should they want to expand their reach westward. If you’ve read this book, you know what happens with their attempt, if you haven’t, grab some popcorn, a few tissues, and a few drinks for the chaos to come. And before I start going on with the full review, if you are a fan of alternative/speculative historical fiction that utilises both the history of Rome and the history of the Native Americans, I’d immediately hand you this book without hesitation and let you get on with reading it.

Why do I say this? This book takes what we today know of history and goes all the way back to the fall of Rome, fixes it in a manner that stabilised the nation for a bit and things went back to normal. There was no dark age, no slow movement into the renaissance from the dark. It’s always been Rome, and always will be, at least in “Clash of Eagles”.

What did I like about this book?

First of all, each detail within “Clash of Eagles” was carefully researched, put together in the most realistic way possible, and it works wonderfully together.

Second of all, the characters within this novel. Gaius Marcellinus, the central focus of the plot, is a well thought out and planned character who does an amazing job bringing us into the world of Nova Hesperia and then embodying us readers in terms of seeing mechanical feats of engineering independently from Roman Empire for the first time, as well as slowly adapting to the land and seeing those inhabiting not as savages, most of them as not savages anyways, but as actual humans. Reading his perspective and watching him go through the five stages of grief during that piece in the text helped make him feel less like an invented character and more like an everyday human who got put into a position he thought wouldn’t be difficult. Until it does, and the whole book changes from one of conquest to one of rebuilding a broken soul by finding purpose with the so-called savages of Nova Hesperian. I won't go much into the other characters within “Clash of Eagles”, because it’ll spoil parts of the book, but just like Gaius Marcellinus, Smale went all in with making each and every one of them real. 

That now brings me to the setting of “Clash of Eagles”. I mentioned earlier that this book was one of conquest before going in a different direction. And I already mentioned earlier that Rome had never fallen in this world. What does that mean for everyone else not a part of the Roman Empire within the Europe area? Being conquered by an army that knows what they’re doing! Anyone outside that area that would like to take parts of the Roman Empire? Dealing with well trained defenders! What does Rome want? EXPANSION! Unfortunately for them, Asia is blocked off by the Persians and the Mongols. So they stagnated for a bit before a centurion killed off a Norse crew, found some gold and looked west. That’s where Gaius now is. Across the ocean. And it’s done pretty well. At the end of the book, Smale added a compendium of all the works he used in order to create a world that was as historically accurate as possible yet so far removed from what we could possibly want to perceive. The Roman Empire went from just the Roman pantheon to multiple pantheons. It expanded over the British Isles, brought the Viking’s to heel and then attempted to conquer what we know today as the United States. Except to them, the emperors of Rome, it’s Nova Hesperia. 

For those in Nova Hesperia, life went on as usual. Civilisations traded with each other. And when the Romans came, they were prepared and whipped the floor with them. 

Then, the technology within this book was a perfect replica of what the Romans had and speculations on what the Hesperian came up with for warfare. And together, with the both clashing in a battle field and later in innovations, it worked. To me, as far as it's concerned, with the technology working the way it did, with the explanations behind it and the believability of it, if it wasn’t stated as fiction and the Roman Empire wasn’t around, I’d think it as fact. That’s how realistic Alan Smale decided to go when crafting together the technology the Hesperian used within this book.

Not only does he make the technology believable, he also uses pre-existing languages, among them Latin and Siouan, to make the cultures so much more alive than they were already without the add-on of those languages. Then, the way he blends Siouan and Latin together, it actually feels like how any other language would get assimilated and used by other languages. Not the “oh, and by the way, this culture can speak x-language now after this person shows up”- way. No, it's far more than just that. I mentioned that Gaius was looking for redemption. He doesn’t speak their language. They don’t speak his. How do the natives solve the problem? Send people over to the weird dude in their camp to learn his language and simultaneously let him learn their language. It’s difficult to describe without saying more about the book’s actual contents than I already have, so let me say this as someone who has learned a second language in a similar way, it’s done in such a way that feels real. That feels tangible enough for you to understand how he’s picking their language up. No immediate language skills, they’ve been earned instead. 

Then, the plot. The plot of “Clash of Eagles” is peculiar as it is fun to read. Rome sends a legion over to the continent Nova Hesperia, the man in charge thinks that the people would be easy to conquer. His army fails and he’s kept alive for information (see blurb). Shenanigans ensue, he’s adopted into the Cohekian city state, some more shenanigans ensue and the book ends, teasing you with two chapters from the second book in the series.

If I had to point out something I didn’t like, it’d be the writing style. Felt a bit clunky at times, which is to be expected for a novel like this, keeping it to how someone of Gaius’s age might talk. Overall though, nothing too bad.

As always, if you’ve made it this far in the review, thank you for reading it, and I hope I’ve helped you find the next book to read. If I’ve not done so, or this book sounds like something you wouldn’t want to read, feel free to check out what the rest of the SFF Insiders review team has to offer, from reviews on high fantasy to space operas removed far from the realm of this planet. 

Wherever you are reading this, have a good morning, good afternoon, good evening or goodnight!