The Scourge of God by William Dietrich

The Scourge of God by William Dietrich

Harper Collins Publishers

Published in 2005

ISBN 006073499X

334 Pages

Summary (Mine): The threat of civilization coming to an end comes true, when Attila, the king of the Huns, seeks to invade Rome.

In order to prevent Attila from invading the Eastern Roman Empire, they dispatch a group of ambassadors to Attila’s camp to seek peace, but some people in that group is in a plot to get a Hun warlord to assassin their leader. When Attila finds out about this, he keeps a hostage, Jonas, and kills or sends the rest away.

While being a hostage at the Hun camp, Jonas meets a beautiful, captured Roman woman, Illana, and falls in love with her, but the problem is that she is promised to the Hun warrior that saved her during the destruction of her city. Jonas, wanting to escape with Illana, tries to come up a plan to escape with a sword, Illana, a fool and his wife, and himself — but it fails, leaving Illana in the clutches of a very angry Attila.

With the sword, they try to gather allies to help Rome and all of civilization to win against Attila, who threatens to destroy everything they hold dear. Will they succeed — and will Jonas rescue his love?

Summary (Back Cover): After decades of assault by barbarian tribes, Rome is weakening and in danger of being overrun. By A.D 449, Attila, ruler of the Huns, has become Europe’s most powerful monarch, his ferocity earning him the title “the Scourge of God.” Now he is poised to assault the West.

The Scourge of God

It begins with an illicit affair. Honoria, sister of Valentinian III, emperor of the Western Roman Empire, creates a scandal when she is discovered in bed with her steward. Imprisoned for her indiscretion, Honoria sees the instrument of her deliverance in the form of the most feared warrior in the known world — Attila. Desperate, she dispatches a messenger to the leader of the Huns, asking for his aid. Taking the entreaty as a marriage proposal, Attila begins to mass his forces to claim the half of the Roman Empire he feels should be his dowry, thus setting in motion the engines of war.

Fearing that open war with the ferocious Huns could destroy the empire, the Romans seek a clandestine solution. Dispatching a group of ambassadors to Attila’s camp under the guise of seeking a diplomatic accord, the Roman leadership intends instead to corrupt one of Attila’s lieutenants into an assassin, eliminating the threat by murdering the Hun leader.

Jonas, an ambitious intellectual, joins the party as its historian. Butt when the plot is discovered, he becomes much more. Taken hostage by the Huns, Jonas realizes that it will require all his skills in diplomacy, and some newfound skills with the sword, to survive. But survival isn’t his only concern. Witin the Hun camp he encounters Illana, a Roman beauty imprisoned by the Huns and promised to one of their warriors. To attempt an escape alone would be foolhardy. To combine it with a rescue would be sucide. But Jonas knows he cannot leave the camp without Illana, even if his devotion costs him his life.

As Jonas plans his escape, he seizes what could be a crucial element in the coming war between Rome and the Huns. Now his life isn’t the only thing at stake. To save the empire and Illana, Jonas must bring warning and an anciet sword to prepare Rome for the biggest battle in history, in which two vast armies will clash to determine the future of Western civilization.

Review: Okay, first of all, I love history-fiction, so, of course, I’m going to give this book a good review.   There also might be spoilers in my reviews, but please try to ignore that.

I admit that I didn’t know much about this time in history, but even though it is fiction, I became interested through the characters, plot, and a lot of description. Though, the description of the battle scene and what the corpses looked like — I could have gone without that.

There is enough description in this book to drag you into that era and get an idea of how people might have lived during the time Attila might have been alive, and also it will get you thinking what would have happen if Attila had won those deciding battles/war in history. The politics in the book were kind of blech, but it makes up the boring politics with some very descriptive battles — to the point you just read quick over — and some history. I haven’t verified how much is actually true, but the general outlook of the plot — minus 3 or 4 of the main characters — is pretty accurate to what happened in history, for what we actually know from that time period.

The book begins with a prologue, but in the book, they called it “introduction”. In the introduction, it begins with Jonas telling you a very general summary of what had happened to him in the past and kind of what’s happening with him now. Then, after that, it goes on about the affair of Honoria and the events that Jonas was hinting about in the introduction. So, basically, it goes from the present to the past and back to the present again and then a little bit, maybe, of what will happen in the future.

I think it was very descriptive — I know I’ve said that like 200 million times, but, hey it is my review — and didn’t have that many or no holes in the plot or the timeline of what was happening. The ending was an epilogue and made the plot a little bit more completed than if the author would have stopped with just what happened to Jonas and Illana. I suggest you don’t read if you don’t like history fiction or a little bit of gory details.