Enemies at Home
Flavia Albia Mystery #2
by Lindsey Davis
GENRE: #HistoricalMystery #AncientRomanEmpire
My rating: ★☆☆☆☆
|🔴 My Brutally Honest Review !
I started this book with high expectations, thinking it would be captivating. I'm Italian, so the Romans have been in our school books since I was six years old! We live in cities founded by them, and we are still surrounded by their history. Instead, this was a terrible read.
It was boring, repetitive, and the characters were not engaging at all.
The protagonist was actually the most unpleasant and unbearable of them all! The language felt like something out of a modern spoof comedy, and the author constantly highlighted only the worst, most despicable aspects of Roman lifestyle. There was no mercy for the patricians or politicians—and no, not even for the poor slaves, who were described as awful people.
The general plot itself wasn't bad. If well-developed, it could have been compelling, especially with a fantastic surprise ending... but unfortunately, there is no surprise at all, given that SPOILER ALERT !!! __ THE spoiler is right there in the title! ___END OF SPOILER
📜 THE PLOT IN BRIEF:
In the heart of Ancient Rome, the enslaved population heavily outnumbered the elite, creating constant anxiety among the aristocracy. The wealthy lived in perpetual dread, well aware that their most dangerous enemies were not at the borders, but serving them dinner. This fear birthed a brutal law: if a master was murdered inside his own home and the killer wasn't found, the entire household of slaves—innocent and guilty alike—would face mass execution.
When a husband and wife are found murdered in their ransacked bedroom, the terrified household staff flee to the Temple of Ceres, seeking sanctuary before the executioner can catch them.
As the Roman authorities scramble to resolve the case, they turn to Flavia Albia. A private informant following in the footsteps of her legendary father, Marcus Didius Falco, Albia is tasked with untangling a web of violence and secrets. With time running out, she must unmask the real killer before the innocent pay the ultimate price.
| 😩 MY EXPERIENCE AND MY THOUGHTS:
For the first half of the book, I kept thinking about giving up (the only reason I didn't was because I had already included it in my "Books Set in Italy" recommendation list on my blog, hoping it would improve). During the second half, I just couldn't wait to reach the end so the torture would finally stop. Needless to say, I have officially removed it from my recommendation list!
|👤 TOO MANY CHARACTER, TOO MANY NAMES (and total confusion!)
The book is chock-full of characters. Many of them barely make a brief appearance, yet the protagonist—who narrates the story in the first person—insists on introducing every single one of them. To make things worse, every character who isn't a slave has at least three names. Since it's Ancient Rome, almost all of them end in "-us" (at least 9 out of 10), making everything incredibly confusing!
But that’s not all.
The real issue is that the author randomly refers to the same character sometimes by their first name, sometimes by their second, and sometimes by their third. Oh, and obviously, brothers share one of those "-us" names, while wives and children have nearly identical names. For our "convenience," the author included a character list at the beginning, but the descriptions weren’t very precise and didn't help much at all.
|🎭 FORCED HUMOR AND AN INSUFFERABLE PROTAGONIST
Flavia Albia is the daughter of Marcus Didius Falco (the investigator from Lindsey Davis's other famous series). She was found as an orphan in Britain, adopted by a good family, and raised with love and comfort... and yet, she doesn't spare anyone from her harsh judgments.
From her high horse, she judges everyone with a cutting sarcasm that honestly made me think the whole time: "Wow, she is so unpleasant!" 🤬👿
Beyond her cynicism, her character feels completely flat, lacking both empathy and a real personality (which is definitely not what Flavia Albia thinks of herself!).
In this book, the rich are all depicted as awful, the officials as lazy, and the slaves as cowardly and cold-blooded.
The only two decent characters are barely in the story. One is Flavia’s uncle—who is randomly called Quintus, then Justinus, and then Quintus again. The other is the magistrate who hires Flavia, who is clearly her love interest in the series (referred to here as an aedile—which took me ages to figure out, since that word has a completely different meaning today! And hey, I was forgetting: Flavia sometimes calls him Tiberius, other times Faustus and he even has a third name: Manlius!!!)). Unfortunately, they just feel like extras who pop up briefly three or four times.
As a result, it is completely impossible to get to know them deeply. For my part, if I don't feel a connection to the characters, the reading experience is just not enjoyable.
| 📺 MODERN LANGUAGE THAT RUINS THE HISTORICAL ATMOSPHERE
Don't get me wrong: obviously, to enjoy a book, we need to understand it, so I don't expect archaic language. However, I also don't like reading about characters in Ancient Rome who talk as if they were in a modern sitcom!
On one hand, the author leaves all the Latin nouns ending in "-us" untranslated—whereas if they had been translated, each would have had a unique, much more comprehensible sound for the reader. Then, we have specific historical roles (like informer or aedile) typical of that era, but the author provides no dictionary, no explanations, and NO HISTORICAL NOTES at all! For me, this is a huge flaw, especially since the book mentions specific tortures, political roles, and complex aspects of the Roman lifestyle without any context.
Yet, despite this historical setting, Flavia speaks exactly like those "know-it-all, I'm-the-coolest" protagonists of modern TV shows. To make matters worse, the women gather to drink, get drunk, and crack vulgar, sexist jokes like they are in an episode of Desperate Housewives! HORRIBLE!
|🔍 TEDIOUS INVESTIGATION AND FLAT "PLOT TWISTS"
The mystery itself was incredibly vapid and monotonous. The plot twists—which were supposed to surprise the reader and make your heart race—were rushed through in two nanoseconds, completely killing any potential excitement or enthusiasm.
For example, a typical scene goes like this: a man enters a room, suddenly there's a scream, the protagonist reaches the wife and sees the man, and immediately realizes he is dead. And that's it! Is this really how you write a plot twist with suspense and emphasis? I don't think so.
| 🖤 TOO MUCH NEGATIVITY AND HISTORICAL DISTORTION
Ancient Roman Empire... when someone mentions these words, what do you think of? Power, glory, incredible organization, and architectural masterpieces that are still standing and used in my country today, after centuries (roads, bridges, aqueducts, etc.). Of course, there was also a dark side: slavery, the persecution of Christians, gladiators, and vices common to all peoples and eras.
Usually, when an author sets a novel in Ancient Rome, I assume they love that historical period and feel fascinated by it.
Reading this book, however, it felt like the author almost despises Roman history, seemingly enjoying ridiculing it and focusing only on its worst aspects.
Furthermore, while the rest of the book lacks descriptive violence, a sudden wave of gratuitous brutality appears at the very end during the crime descriptions. While it didn't bother me personally, it felt completely inconsistent with the rest of the story—like a false note in a song—and it could be highly misleading or inappropriate for a young teenager.
Plus, let's be realistic: since the dawn of time, every single empire has exploited the weak and enslaved those who couldn't defend themselves. This includes the British (since the author is English), us Europeans when we colonized the Americas, and so on. No civilization in history is innocent. I don’t want to get into politics, and I’m not defending the ancient Romans just because I'm Italian, but the one-sided negativity in this book felt unfair and excessive.
| 🏁 CONCLUSION
I cannot recommend this book, nor the Flavia Albia series, to anyone. I have read rave reviews from people saying they "missed the author's previous series"—well, to me, that just proves they didn't actually like this book or character that much!
Thank you for reading my opinion. Perhaps it was a little too gut-felt, but I like to say what I truly think, without following the crowd.
👉 Curious about my Italian Setting Reading List ? Discover 15 incredible book recommendations set in Italy, strictly during the summer months, by checking out my Italian Summer Vibes Reading List!
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