Antony and Cleopatra, by Colleen McCullough
By Peter on Mar 6, 2008 in Colleen McCullough, Fiction Books, Historical Fiction, book review
I like the Masters of Rome by Colleen McCullough a lot, and have read all the books in the series. Therefore I have been looking forward to Antony and Cleopatra for a while.
Also in this book, Colleen McCullough turns her attention to the legendary romance of Antony and Cleopatra. The love affair between Mark Antony and Cleopatra is a strange story, in a sense a timeless tale of love, politics, and power. However, in McCullough’s version, it doesn’t really come off as a steaming hot affair, nor as a tale of Mark Antony the seducer, but much more as a story of the seduction of Mark Antony by a determined and strong-willed Cleopatra. Cleopatra has an agenda of her own: to replace Antony and ultimately Octavian with Caesarion, the son she had with Julius when he came courting. This is her motive for wanting to seduce Antony, and she succeeds!
Antony and Cleopatra is another good Masters of Rome
Overall, a wonderful set up for a great book. Nevertheless, I have to say that among the books in the Master of Rome series, this is the book I have liked the least. It is hard to pinpoint the exact reason, but there are at least two that comes to mind.
The first is has to do with the characters. Mark Antony and Octavian are simply not nearly as interesting as, say, Caesar and Sulla – neither in a historical perspective, nor as characters in this book. McCullough does not manage to makes these characters, or Cleopatra for that matter, really come alive. Antony is particular comes across as more or less stupid.
Secondly, the action moves too slow in this book, compared to the earlier books in the series, and the battles lack smartness and stuff that make me fascinated.
So, yeah, an ok read, but Antony and Cleopatra is definitely not up to my expectations this time!
Links to the Masters of Rome-series by Colleen McCullough at amazon US: Masters of Rome
black keytag | Jun 10, 2008 | Reply
Yes, I agree that this is by far the weakest in the series. I’m not sure that Octavian or Antony were weak characters; Antony, after all, was not dull and stupid in any of the other books, and the “romance” between them is laughable… I have read that McCullough wanted to end the series with the October Horse, and it shows. The passion of the previous six is just not there with this one.