Old loves through new eyes; Fandom Trees reveals

[dolorosa_12]

The current snowflake_challenge prompt is short and to the point: Rec Us Your Newest Thing.



My newest thing is not new so much as an old thing to which I've recently returned: Steven Saylor's Roma Sub Rosa mystery series.


As is probably clear from the title, these books are set in Ancient Rome, and involve a fictional private detective (although of course he doesn't use that word) called Gordianus the Finder. In terms of timeframe, the series spans the decades between the final days of Sulla's dictatorship, the end of Republic, Julius Caesar's rise to power and assassination, and the earliest years of Rome as an empire under Augustus. During this time, Gordianus moves from small-time contractor doing shady work for dubious people to someone who gets hired by all the political movers and shakers of the time. The cases are either based on real historical legal cases (the first book sees Gordianus working for Cicero on a case that Cicero himself wrote about), or specific political events that — with our benefit of hindsight — were pivotal in the transformation that Rome underwent during this time. You get a great idea of both the minutiae of everyday Roman life, and also Saylor's perspective on what it may have felt like to have lived through such tumultuous times and witness such seismic shifts in your city's sociopolitical make-up. Saylor also has a fantastic talent in making the larger-than-life soap-operatic characters of this period of history come to vivid life on the page, drawing on both contemporaneous salacious accounts, and more recent fictionalised representations of Roman excess and scandal, such as I, Claudius.

One thing to flag up — as for me it's part of the charm, but it has the potential to annoy people — is that although the set-dressing feels authentic, there is a somewhat modern sensibility, especially when it comes to a lot of Gordianus's sensibilities and values. It's very obvious that Saylor was writing the series against the background of the early 2000s US invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, and the 'global war on terror,' and as the series progresses there is an increasing sense of fury at the injustices perpetuated in this context, and in particular the mainstreaming of the idea in the United States that erosion of civil liberties and individual and societal freedoms are necessary in order to combat the threat of global terrorism. All this very much colours Saylor's portrayal of Roman politics. (Reviewers' description of this series as being written from the perspective of a 'Texan in a toga' are not far off.)

The other potential dealbreaker that I will also highlight is slavery as an institution is very much in the forefront, and not seriously questioned by either Gordianus or the other characters, beyond occasional flashes of insight that this aspect of their society is unjust and cruel. (But it tends to be on a case by case basis: this person is so clever, but is trapped by slavery and such will never realise their potential, this person is unduly cruel to the slaves they own and that's awful, but the fact that their society allows some people to own other people and do whatever they like to them, such that killing them is not viewed as murder, is never challenged in any way, although it's obvious the author is depicting, not endorsing such a state of affairs.) Gordianus himself begins the series in a 'relationship' with a woman whom he bought and enslaved, although in the second book he frees and marries her; for me there is enough contextual detail that I'm able to overlook this, but I realise that for some of you this is going to be too big a barrier to entry, so I felt it warranted a warning so you know what you're getting yourself in for.

I first started reading these books when I was still in secondary school (I have an incredibly vivid memory of wandering around my school library when I was sixteen during a free period, discovering the first two books on the shelves, and sitting at a table with my friends, reading the books while we were all supposed to be studying or doing homework), and then read every single new novel in the series as it was published. For over a decade, the whole lot were out of reach at my mum's place in Australia, but last year I finally got all my childhood/early adulthood library of books shipped over to the UK, and had access to them once more.

I had the idea to do a reread alongside a reread of another beloved series of historical mysteries, Barbara Hambly's Benjamin January novels, since both take place in societies of profound inequality and tumultuous, destabilising change (Hambly's in 1830s New Orleans with a protagonist who is a free Black man witnessing the fragile privileges that came with that status slowly being eroded), and tend to involve their characters grappling with the challenges that accompany this inequality and change. As with Hambly's books, Roma Sub Rosa requires the reader to accept that they are depicting a world whose characters tolerate a monstrous set of injustices, and in which even the 'good' characters in such books (Gordianus and his family and friends, the various white friends and allies of Ben January) will do very little to challenge the foundations of those injustices — just nibble around the edges, making small exceptions, or helping their own friends survive while leaving the structural horrors in place.

That specific type of story (people building community and helping each other and trying to carve out little spaces where they can live and love and breathe in the wake of overwhelming, systemic injustices that they're unable to change) is one of my very favourites, and I suppose that's why these two series have resonated so strongly with me. I'm only two books into the reread so far, but I'm really enjoying rediscovering a series that I enjoyed so much the first time around!


fandomtrees has just gone live, and I've received some delightful gifts, representing the full spread of fandoms that I requested, which is particularly pleasing.

sunshine304 made me some absolutely stunning Babylon Berlin icons, ninthfeather made a great batch of Six of Crows icons, and hekateras wrote me a very creepy and atmospheric folklore-inspired fanfic:

Harvest (823 words) by Hekachoc
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Slavic Mythology & Folklore, Original Work
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Characters: Polednice | Lady Midday (Slavic Mythology & Folklore), Original Female Character(s), Original Male Character(s)
Additional Tags: Animal Death, Near Death Experiences, Death, Folklore, Deities
Summary:

Some minutes pass, but it is always midday.

I made two contributions to the fest: some vegetarian recipe recs for doomedblade, and some Six of Crows fic for isilloth:

Caught inside every open eye (1791 words) by Dolorosa
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Six of Crows Series - Leigh Bardugo
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Characters: Kaz Brekker, Inej Ghafa
Additional Tags: Post-Canon
Summary:

'My days of clambering up buildings and sneaking around rooftops as part of some dangerous and complicated heist sparked by your secretive and cryptic whims are long over!'

 

Inej and Kaz work together on one last job.

I love Fandom Trees, and think it's a really fun event, so I'm glad it went fairly smoothly this year. I hope everyone else who participated had a good time, and received some nice gifts!