Rating: 3/5
Disclaimer: I received a free ecopy via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.
There are two major plotlines in this book. The first involves a slave woman who is sent to the gladiator pit after killing her owner. The second follows Antonius Axia, the protagonist from volume one, as he investigates the strange deaths of the children of the Roman elite.
The like Achilla, the slave turned gladiator, a lot. She is a strong character and acts as an inspiration for the other women in the book. Antonius Axia is an interesting take on the detective archetype and is labeled as a "detectioner". He is more passionate in this book as events strike a lot closer to home than the previous volume, both literally and figuratively. Taken as a whole, I like the story. There is a bit of a mystery that seems to work out pretty well. The person behind all of this is pretty interesting too.
The supporting characters that reappear from the previous volume weren't as interesting this time around. The Vestal Virgins show up, but play a much smaller role. Their main tasks are to introduce the problem for Antonius and act as a scapegoat for Nero, who was wholly uninteresting in this volume.
I feel a bit mixed on the art. Some of the character faces seemed oddly proportioned to me, but otherwise seemed fine. There wasn't much that stood out to me in terms of the art. The coloring is well done though. This series is a bit different from the other books that Valiant puts out and can serve as a good place for new readers to come onboard.
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