[ATDrake]

Originally Posted by cromag

I don't post here often, but I'm currently reading The Chronicles of Master Li and Number Ten Ox, by Barry Hughart, a collection of his three novels set in a China that never was:

These are some of my very favourites and I own them in two languages in multiple editions (including a hardcover omnibus with very nice illustrations by Kaja Foglio of Girl Genius fame). Very highly recommended, for anyone else who might be thinking of picking up the series which is now e-booked from Subterranean Press (not available to Canadians, alas).

Finished Ruth Downie's Tabula Rasa, 6th and latest in her Gaius Petreius Ruso, Intrepid Empire-Trotting Roman Legionary Doctor murder mystery series set in Roman Britain during the time of Emperor Hadrian, which I bought using one of the recent Kobo contest coupons while they were still working.

This time, Ruso is assigned to a camp working on the construction of Hadrian's Wall, where the sudden disappearance of his clerk, a nephew of a friend and colleague of his, and the subsequent fallout of the less-than-diplomatic search for the missing Candidus among the local British farmers, causes escalating tensions between the Romans and the natives.

Ruso also gets to know Tilla's tribe better, through some old friends of her long-deceased family, who become less friendly as the incendiary events progress.

Previously, we'd gotten to see Tilla as the foreigner among the Romans, but at home among her native Britons (even those of different tribes than her own small obscure one) and therefore able to move and act as one of them, even when she was only grudgingly accepted by the Romans.

Here, we see Tilla become a stranger among her own kind, being distrusted by her tribe as a Romanized sellout in whom they no longer have confidence, and it's interesting to see the ways in which she does and doesn't cope as she has to modify her usual straightforward approaches for gaining native co-operation with the investigation.

There are a few twists and turns, but the whole affair turns out to be relatively straightforward, with a whodunnit which had decent clues laid out over the course of the book.

I'm more concerned about a particular development which addresses certain issues raised in previous books, which seems a bit forced and overly sentimental to me, since the planning and setup for this would have had to come in the previous, and (vague allusion, but you may be able to guess what had happened, so tags)

Spoiler:

provided perhaps the only real motivation for a particular character doing as they did then so that this could happen now. Although it's not nearly as forced as if the author had gone the obvious cliché route of resolving it in a more personally suddenly "miraculous" sort of way popular with even more overly sentimental authors.

But I'm willing to reserve judgment until the next book to see how this will affect things in the future, as it's not necessarily as detrimental as my reflexive anti-sentimentalist instinct tells me.

Anyway, this did have a decent case and we got to see the return of several prior supporting cast characters whose appearance I enjoyed, learn more about Tilla's people (the particular ones of her family tribe, rather than the more generic other fellow Britons we'd encountered previously), and as always, this came with an Historical Note from the author giving known facts, dramatic alterations, and further reading suggestions for the history behind the story.

Recommended if you like murder mysteries involving Ancient Rome, Ancient Britain, and/or historical medical/military personnel. Not quite as good as the previous books, IMHO, but still another solid installment to an enjoyable series.