Sparrow

In terms of prose, this book is a little dodgy– first person present rarely works, and here it's occasionally grating, and often distracting. But don't let that stop you from reading the work.

I think it's impossible for this book not to be compared to Elodie Harper's Wolf Den series, and while each have their strong and weak points, I think this book comes out stronger in terms of literary worth and political analysis. The story is short and to the point, about power, about hierarchy, about colonialism. Rome is an animal that feeds on the weak, and so to be strong is to eventually be corrupted by this influence– not because of capitalism, or because of inequality, or because of any one abstract principle; the book posits that injustice is inevitable in a system that is built on injustice. The tools this system uses– colonialism, capitalism, imperialism, slavery, classism, sexism– are systematic and important and innate, but they are legs of a spider.

And yet, is life worth living? Yes. Is it worthwhile to try? Yes. Is collective action, friendship, love, honor and hope, worthwhile? Yes, always.

Despite having an explicit rape scene (something Elodie Harper occludes rather than reveal with her prose) I find the book much more hopeful than The Wolf Den. The use of a first person narrator telling us the end of his story (similar to Graves' I, Claudius) serves not as a clever narrative device, but as a balm. We know he'll make it out. Does it really matter how?