dhampyresa

I was so excited to tell you all about what I've been reading, but then I realised I couldn't talk about what I've been reading. Not all of them, anyway, because the combination of all of them might as be a great big neon sign pointing at the fic I wrote for Night on Fic Mountain, so I'll tell you all about them (and the rest) when the anon period is over.

I will tell you what I won't be reading, though.

I was noodling around on the Internet trying to find books on the Second Punic War (as you do) and I came across a review for Pride of Carthage by David Anthony Durham.

"Gosh," thought I, "'a novel of Hannibal'? Sign me up!"

Then my eyes skimmed over the begiinging of the review. In that skim, I learned that the author posited that there was a fourth Barcid brother (unlikely, thought I, but why not) named Hanno and here my face did a horrified twisty thing and I resolved not to read the book.

I just don't think there's any way on Earth Hamilcar would name one of his sons the same thing as the man who lost him the First Punic War*. That the author thinks he might have gives me poor hope either for the amount of research done or how much we're going to agree on matters of characterisation. Or both.

So I'm not reading it. Life is too short.


What I will be reading, though and I will do so this very week-end, see if I don't, is Darkness Over Cannae by Jenny Dolfen. It's more than time that I stop doing the hype/hype avoidance thing I've been doing. I might also start Tumulte à Rome, to keep in the Second Punic War theme.


And while I'm talking about dead Carthaginians, this article on Hamilcar and Hasdrubal the Fair's interesting realtionship might be of interest to some of you.


*Hanno the Great then proceeded to lose Hannibal the Second Punic War, btw, so it's not like his enmity for the Barcids stopped when the war ended. (Hanno the Great is my second least favourite dude from the Punic Wars. The first one being, of course, Scipio Aemilianus.)