Not the Caligula you might expect

This biographical novel of Caligula partly reforms the reputation of the notorious emperor. Viewed through the eyes of Caligula's sister, Livilla, he is portrayed from his boyhood in the reign of terror of Tiberius and the police state of Sejanus to power in his own right. Caligula's bloodline marks him as either an heir or a threat to the paranoid old emperor's power and the youth, a bit of a prodigy, bravely calculates a safe route through the dangers that have already consumed his mother and brothers (and possibly his father, Germanicus). Family politics and political intrigue intertwine tightly until Caligula emerges as the new emperor. And there his real problems begin.

Caligula is a study on how power changes everything. The young emperor begins well, but with a model like Tiberius, how can he begin a golden age in a corrupted Rome that chafes under absolute power and considers clemency weakness? Simon Turney unfolds the reign of Caligula almost as a disintegration of youth and innocence.

While Turney builds little on the narrator's character, Livilla builds a convincing portrait of Caligula as an intelligent youth, loving brother and, first, a hopeful new emperor, and later, a cynical tyrant. It's to Turney's credit that he dispenses with many of the mythical accruals around the legendary emperor's life and that he tells the story as it may plausibly have happened. Caligula's turn to tyranny only after many shocking betrayals is convincing and well-drawn.

I was engaged with this story all the way through. Turney has a straight forward writing style and he doesn't waste words on description, rather letting the reader decide what his characters and settings look like; it is emotion and conflict that drives the story forward. Recommended. I will read Commodus and additional novels by Simon Turney.

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