The Sword of Attila by Michael Curtis Ford

Then, too, Julian's philosophical inner life and his genius for enlightened Hellenism has been dealt with at length in Gore Vidal's Julian(1962). An unreliable narrator threatened by the hero's greatness might have been a marvelous device, but in this case Caesarius's hostility is over the top, and his snide commentary gets too much airtime at the expense of Julian. But Caesarius is so unrelentingly angry and humorless that his voice-over ends up stifling Julian as a character.

Ford clearly admires Julian's breadth of intellectual curiosity and his mission to restore diversity of religious practice and neo-Platonism. The fast-paced narrative competently examines Julian's development as a soldier, inspired military commander and rhetorician. Battle scenes predominate in the early going, as Ford traces Julian's military campaigns in Gaul and documents his growing opposition to his uncle, Constantine the Great. The narrator is Julian's physician, Caesarius, ostensibly a loyal adviser but also a dogmatic Christian who wants to save Julian's soul and thinks very little of the man he serves. This second historical novel by Ford (after The Ten Thousand) follows the rise of the Emperor Julian, the fourth-century Roman Caesar who has been vilified by Christian historians for his reintroduction of Hellenistic religions to Rome. Of Persia, Gods & Legions is a breathtaking historical re-creation of one of the most dangerous periods-and enduring mysteries-of all time. Ranging from the forbidding forests of ancient Gaul to the sweltering sands In Persia, however, his gods and his sanity desert him, and in one swift stroke, the course of history is altered forever. Julian discards the Christianity of his boyhood and sets his sights on the greatest conquest of all-the Persian Empire. Now the dark side of his ambition emerges.

Soon after, defying his own emperor against overwhelming odds, he risks civil war and ultimately seizes the Empire for himself, becoming the most powerful man in the world while still only thirty. Tested by bloody battle and the scepticism of the Roman legions, Julian proves to be a military genius, crushing the German tribes that have threatened Rome for generations. Unexpectedly summoned to the court of the Emperor Constantius, he fears the worst-only to find himself bearing the ring of Caesar of the Western Empire. Julian, a young scholar in Athens, is the last survivor of a bloody political purge that killed his entire family.

The Sword of Attila by Michael Curtis Ford