Showing posts with label Slaves of the Empire. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Slaves of the Empire. Show all posts

Monday, August 3, 2020

Slaves Of The Empire #5: Corissa The Vestal Virgin


Slaves Of The Empire #5: Corissa The Vestal Virgin, by Dael Forest
August, 1978  Ballantine Books

The Slaves Of The Empire lurches to a close with a fifth volume that’s just as befuddling as the previous four, Stephen “Dael Forest” Frances doing little to get his readers up to speed on the plot, the characters, or anything else. As I’ve said in I think every other review of this series, I get the impression that Slaves Of The Empire was written as one big book – one that, judging from this final volume, never even got a proper ending. Worse yet, Corissa The Vestal Virgin for the most part almost seems to be an installment of another toga trash series entirely, with the recurring characters of the previous four volumes reduced to supporting roles.

As we’ll recall, the main plot has it that a Roman noble named Hadrian (not to be confused with the future emperor) is building a city called Trebula outside of Rome while meanwhile he’s fallen in love with his slave, a Briton named Haesel. Haesel’s brothers and sisters have their own subplots, from dim-witted bombshell Mertice, who is caught in a lame love triangle, to Thane, who is a master craftsman. There’s also Redeard, who became a free man volumes ago and is now a successful businessman. The very least we get in the way of “resolution” in Corissa The Vestal Virgin is that some of these siblings are finally reunited: Haesel and Thane meet in Trebula, the first they’ve seen each other since they all were taken into slavery in the first volume. Surprisingly, Frances doesn’t much exploit the dramatic potential here, just leaving their emotional reunion to a scant few lines of off-hand text, but then again the series overall has been an emotionless, spiritless dirge that takes place in a vacantly-described historical setting.

As mentioned, it’s the new characters who really run the show this time, but even here the title is misleading: “Corissa,” the lovely young head Vestal Virgin (meaning she’s been in service to goddess Vesta the longest), only appears on a handful of pages. Instead the plot is about a scheming duo of senators who plan to pin the blame of a ruined crop in Romania (or somewhere, I forgot) on Vesta – particularly, that Rome has grown so dismissive of the once-important goddess of hearth and home that she has invoked her wrath by destroying these highly-necessary crops. Their proof point is the fact that the so-called “virgins” of Vestal are anything but, sleeping around with lovers and not taking their once-sacred duties in vain; whereas serving Vesta was at one time a spiritual calling, it is now seen by young noble women as a ladder to high stature.

Diocles and Litirum are these two senators (I might’ve jotted the latter’s name down incorrectly, but I’m too lazy to get the book out of the box to verify), and they take up a goodly portion of the narrative with their boring scheming. It’s a lot of back and forth with Maximus, the High Priest of Vesta (himself a wealthy nobleman who prefers the solitude of his library and looks on his “sacred duties” with boredom) and some dude who is the “Chief Augur.” You know those parts in old historical epics like Ben Hur or The Fall Of The Roman Empire where it’s a lot of British guys in period costume debating with one another in faux-“Shakespearian” accents? Well the entire Slaves Of the Empire series is pretty much just like that, this subplot in particular.

And still we focus on other Vestas instead of titular Corissa; one of them gets involved with a dude heavily into s&m, and he gradually talks her into some whipping. This last bit is probably the sleaziest the series has gotten, but even here it’s told with that disaffected, clinical tone so familiar of British pulp. I mean there’s no outright sex in the book, just a lot of talk about “love-play,” and the majority of the lurid stuff is told in summary. There seems to be a focus on whipping in this one, though; the novel opens with Maximus presiding over the sacred duty of sending off an “old” Vesta and replacing her with a new one. Here Frances skillfully sets up his theme of dwindling faith in the old ways: we’re told that once upon a time Vestas who shirked in their duty were seriously whipped before being cast out of the temple, but now it’s a formulaic procedure in which the whipping is faked for the audience, and the girl must pretend to scream and cry.

This though again brings me to the question of when all this takes place. At one point Frances reels off a list of the gods the Romans believe in, but they’re all the old ones, like Jupiter and such. In reality, by the time of the Empire, most Romans were into esoteric Eastern cults, like Isis or Mithra. This is actually how Christianity was able to spread; it was the new hip religion among rich Roman matrons, particularly around the era of Constatine, when a few of these same matrons “discovered” sites in Jerusalem which are still considered sacred today. But there’s no mention of any of that here, which again places the setting of the series in question. We do for once get a glimmer of period detail when Tiberius and Nero are briefly mentioned; there’s also mention of an upcoming aristocrat named Trajan, with the implication that he indeed is the future emperor of the same name.

We do get a resolution on the lame Alexander-Mertice-Melanos triangle that’s been going on since the first volume. As we’ll recall, Alexander is a foppish gadabout who prides himself on his “love-play;” he once owned Mertice, who fell in love with him, but he gave her away to Melanos, ie the noble tomboy babe Alexander lusts after. Last time it was set up that Alexander had some plan in mind for these two women. This time we see it, and it’s pretty despicable; through belabored means he kidnaps Mertice, placing her in a sort of silk prison for a few days. All as a “joke” on Melanos. He has one of his buddies visit Mertice every day, trying to get her in the sack; once she’s finally succumbed and is sufficiently worked up, Alexander comes in and drops the bomb that he’s behind her kidnapping. He tries to get her in the mood with his hands – Mertice being a virgin still – until Mertice not only reveals that someone’s already done this for her, but indeed that it was done better than Alexander’s doing it…and the person doing it was a slave! This we’re to understand hits Alexander right where it hurts: in his arrogant heart.

Otherwise we don’t even get to “main” characters Hadrian and Haesel until page 67. Their story seems to occur in the swingtown seventies, with Haesel again happily “lending” Hadrian to a rich older noblewoman whose money is important for the creation of Trebula. Meanwhile Hadrian gives Haesel her freedom, for once showing a spark of personality as he first treats her roughly, calling her “slave” and the like, before revealing that she is free, and also the new mistress of his house. But this sadly is where we leave them, so there’s no resolution to the overall storyline; we’re told that Haesel will still try to find Mertice and Redwing, implying that in future volumes this would finally come to pass.

Frances does spice the book up with lurid details likely gleaned from Daniel Mannix’s Those About To Die, in particular a long sequence, which suddenly detours into the style of a history book, which recounts the bloody entertainments of “the stadium,” aka the Flavian Amphitheater, aka the Colisseum. It’s all sick and wild, with lurid tidbits about Romans having sex in the stands while blood sprays in the stadium below, but it just seems to be lifted whole-hog from some other “nonfiction” book and placed in here. Even worse is it’s all relayed via summary, in a part in which Redbeard happens to do business near the stadium and briefly reflects on its horrible nature and background. 

This sudden focus on violence and sleaze plays out in the finale, an unexpectedly brutal sequence which has the two scheming senators succeed in their plot; Vesta’s “virgins” are blamed for the crop failure, and are summarily rounded up…some of them, like Corissa, while in bed with their lovers! So much for the “virgin” tags. Corissa pays the ultimate price, whipped for real and then friggin’ buried alive outside the Hearth of Vesta, all so as to appease the goddess. From here we jump to an arbitrary, WTF-finale in which Poppaea, a very minor recurring character who is not to be confused with the former empress, picks up some dude on the street and decides he’ll be her new plaything in bed.

And that, my friends, is the unsteady note on which Slaves Of The Empire comes to a close, leading me to believe that Frances likely had more installments in mind and the series was just cancelled – and he wasn’t asked to write a concluding installment when the books were brought over to the US a few years after they’d been published in the UK. I have to say though I’m glad to be done with the books – the best thing about them is the awesome cover art by Boris Valejo on these US editions. If only the actual novels were up to that caliber!

Thursday, March 22, 2018

Slaves Of The Empire #4: Gracus The Centurion


Slaves Of The Empire #4: Gracus The Centurion, by Dael Forest
August, 1978  Ballantine Books

I wouldn’t recommend taking a long break between volumes of Slaves Of The Empire, like I did; it’s been years now since I read the previous volume, so I was a bit out of sorts while reading this one. As ever, Stephen “Dael Forest” Frances cares little about catching readers up on what came before; there is zero in the way of synopses of previous books, nor are recurring characters even introduced or described. As I’ve mentioned before, it seems clear that Frances wrote the five volumes of this series as one long book.

It must be said, though, that Frances’s rather large cast of characters is pretty memorable – there’s architect Hadrian, designing the new city of Trebula, with his love-conquered slave Haesel; Saelig, brother of Haesel, a freed slave who provides a sort of shelter for other slaves; Brotan, slave-farm owner who found happiness in slavery (the theme of the series); Thane, artistically-gifted brother of Haesel who now works for Hadrian; Mertice, dull-witted sister of Haesel, once owned by foppish athlete Alexander and now owned by tomboy Melanos; and seldom-seen Redbeard, Haesel’s other brother, yet another freedman who has become a successful businessman. And that’s just the “main” characters.

Gradually all of these characters are converging on Trebula, which seems to be Frances’s theme – that, and the aforementioned “happiness in slavery” angle. For again and again these characters thrust themselves into positions of slavery, whether willingly or not, and find happiness under the yoke. But they’re all headed for Trebula; Hadrian is already there, currently engaged in pleasing Valle, a wealthy matron whose husband could really help out Trebula or somesuch. Honestly this is one subplot I’d forgotten, but long story short Hadrian basically has to treat Valle, who lives with him, as a VIP and have lots of sex with her.

The only problem is, Valle is kind of old but refuses to accept it. We’ll be informed of salacious stuff like, “the halos and nipples of [Valle’s] breasts were painted ultramarine blue,” and then Frances will buzzkill it with the mention of the “lifeless sagging of her breasts.” Meanwhile Haesel, who we’ll recall was once a proud young gal who refused to bend her neck to the yoke of slavery, encourages Hadrian to screw Valle a bunch for the good of Trebula, and “happily” tells him stuff like, “I am my master’s slave and obey his orders.” Again – happiness in slavery.

Another recurring theme is how Frances adds more characters to an already-unwieldy pile of them. Last time it was Brotan, this time it’s Gracus, a 40 year-old centurion currently warfaring in Dacia (modern Romania, a helpful footnote informs us). Gracus, ugly as sin and a centurion thanks more to his stolid service record than any intelligence, is winding up his military career. He plans to retire to Rome and live with his brother Flacus, who is married to young Julia; along with their parents, they run a metal shop. Gracus picks up a female Dacian slave, a not attractive one with a long, very long neck, and gawky underfed limbs. He treats her miserably and guess what…she comes to love him, and vice versa.

Meanwhile as for Flacus and Julia – more new characters. Julia opens the novel; having recently lost her three-month old child, she now turns her still-swollen breasts to none other than Alexander, who suckles her in exchange for lots of money. It’s the new “in” thing among the wealthy althletes of Rome – suckling mother’s milk(!). Indeed Alexander later tells arch-enemy/lust-object Melanos, who had a child last volume, that she too should rent out her boobs (“I have always adored your breasts, Melanos.”), but this of course just elicits more verbal sparring between the two.

In fact the Alexander-Melanos stuff is probably the highlight of Gracus The Centurion. It sure isn’t the stuff with Gracus, whose sections are ponderous and too reminiscent of similar “happiness in slavery” routines from previous volumes. But Frances isn’t done; there’s an entire arbitrary part that goes on and on about various female slaves who have been put to use on Brotan’s breeding farm and are now being returned to their old masters in Rome. Ruined, haggard women all, their bodies beaten down by multiple births and miscarriages. Many of them just long for death, which leads to some poignant passages, where previously-wrathful owners, who sent these poor women to Brotan’s farm in the first place, start to feel pity and mercy for their returned slaves.

Speaking of Brotan, when we briefly hook up with the dude he’s had his pal Brotan, from the first volume, make him a slave collar, which Brotan happily straps across his neck for his mistress’s pleasure! All it needs is to have “Fido” on it. Meanwhile we have interminable scenes of Gracus and his Dacian slave making their way to Rome, even stopping off on Brotan’s farm, where another interminable, arbitrary scene has farm doctor Malen trying unsuccessfully to buy the Dacian girl, who is named Nitka.

Frances’s prose still has that clinical feel, indeed to the point that a sort of torpor settles over the book. Even parts that should be thrilling, like Hadrian and Thane hunting a loose lion in Trebula, or Alexander wrestling “a tall, coal-black Negro,” come off more so as ponderous. Frances as ever better excels at the bizarre stuff, like Brotan’s “owner” Vanus whipping him and making Brotan her “serving girl” for dinner, down to dressing Brotan like a fetching female slave. And the stuff with grown men suckling breastmilk is so prevalent in the novel that you have to wonder what the hell was going on in the author’s head.

Gracus The Centurion ends on a cliffhanger, unfortunately; finally tired of Melanos’s taunting barbs, Alexander plans to steal Mertice from her as a “joke.” Meanwhile everyone’s on their way to Trebula, so my assumption is the next installment, which was the last volume of the series, will see everything wrap up in that newly-built city. I’ll try to get to it a lot sooner than I did this one.

Monday, June 23, 2014

Slaves Of The Empire #3: Brotan The Breeder


Slaves Of The Empire #3: Brotan The Breeder, by Dael Forest
August, 1978  Ballantine Books

Stephen Frances (aka “Dael Forest”) delivers another melodrama set during the Roman Empire, once again picking up immediately after the previous volume. It seems more and more that the Slaves Of The Empire series is really just one very long book split into five separate volumes. No attempt is made by Frances (or the publisher) to catch the reader up on anything, so if you’ve forgotten minor characters or situations, you’re out of luck. 

However, one stumbling block for Brotan The Breeder is that, while it starts off where Haesel The Slave ended, with Hadrian and the now-vanquished-by-love Haesel waking up together after a night of (non-detailed) good lovin’, the narrative soon jumps over to the new-to-the-series character Brotan, a freedman who runs a “farm” outside of Rome. This material goes on for about 60 pages, as we learn all about Brotan’s Farm. Frances pulls out all the stops here, showing how very different the ancient world was from our own. 

Brotan’s business scheme is to buy leases on slaves who are knocked up – slaves forbidden to get pregnant, of course – and to trundle the women off to his farm, where they will work the land in various degrees of difficulty in accordance with their stage of pregnancy. Brotan leases the women for three years, and to get more bang for his buck, so to speak, he tries to get each of the women pregnant again, as many times as possible, using the “randy guards” who patrol the farm! Brotan then sells off these infant slaves, taking them from their mothers immediately after birth.

We see how the farm works through the eyes of Fabia, a minor character who only appeared long enough in the previous volume to lose her virginity to Strabo (muscle-bound pleasure slave of the depraved Poppea). But Strabo also succeeded in getting Fabia pregnant, and now she’s shipped off to Brotan’s Farm. Along the way she is taken advantage of by one of the freedman guards, though this dude’s gentle and Fabia falls in love with him…not that Frances really follows up this subplot. Instead more time is devoted to Malen, the doctor who oversees the pregnant women on the farm, and there follows a long sequence as we watch him on a normal day’s work.

Finally we get back to the main storyline(s) of the series. Brotan decides to venture into Rome for the first time in decades, carting in a new shipment of slaves, which he sells to his colleague Brotan, last seen in the first volume. Brotan has an auction, and Saelig shows up – Brotan uncomfortable around the now-wealthy Briton who was once himself a slave on Brotan’s auction block. Saelig buys all of the women; there is a touching scene where one of the slave-girls, “comely” but for one leg shorter than the other, only succeeds in generating a thirty-sesterce bid, and that’s after scant bidding, and Saelig offers a hundred for her.

Saelig has been busy building a villa in a large swath of land he’s bought, inland from resort destination Baiae. Here he treats the slave-girls like friends and lovers, trying his hardest to drum out their servile attitudes and make them call him by his name. Areta, Hadrian’s wife and Saelig’s former lover, visits him from nearby Baiae, which she’s decided to make her permanent home. Now much more cool-headed, Areta has sworn off the haughy bitchiness expected of the typical Roman highborn woman, but nonetheless is shocked over how casually Saelig treats these women; he’s even managed to get one of them pregnant.

Areta is further shocked over Hadrian’s blasé announcement that he’s in love with Haesel and intends to treat her as his equal. Areta isn’t upset because Hadrian’s her husband, as they no longer live together and Areta herself has picked up a new lover, some dude named Sark; she’s upset because treating a slave equally will make Hadrian look like a fool. But Areta is such a changed character that eventually she dismisses even this, content that Hadrian is happy.

Since Areta has dropped the mantle as the series harlot, Poppea takes it over. Oft mentioned since the first volume but unseen until now, Poppea turns out not to be the Empress of Desire or even Poppea the Elder; Frances has a habit of just using various names from Roman history, this being another instance. Poppea is though a whip-wielding, slave-beating hussy, and when her wealthy husband realizes she’s making a fool of herself, debasing herself in her lust for studly slave Strabo, he arranges for dumb-as-an-ox Strabo to be kidnapped onto some merchant vessel and conveniently taken from Rome for several months.

Another ongoing plot concerns tomboy Melanos, who is about to give birth to the child she conceived with the now-dead Plautus. Meanwhile she still entertains herself by taunting Alexander, the wealthy fop who continues to lust for her. As we’ll recall, Melanos now owns Mertice (ie the sister of Haesel, Saelig, and the other Britons of the first volume), having bought her from Alexander, who barely registered the girl, despite her obvious obsession for him.

Melanos, playing a game, dresses Mertice up like a highborn lady and invites Alexander over for dinner, with Alexander immediately pining for this girl he’s certain he’s seen before. But Mertice, following Melanos’s orders, leaves Alexander in the lurch, and Melanos digs the knife deeper by revealing to Alexander that he’s been lusting over a slave. It all ends with Alexander swearing vengeance and Mertice crying due to her continued love for the fop.

As usual there’s a bit of sex here and there, particularly when it comes to detailing how casually it was treated in the ancient world, but it’s relayed in the same antiseptic style as previous such scenes. More focus is placed this time out on the travails of the pregnant women in Brotan’s Farm and the ongoing melodramatic storylines. And speaking of Brotan, he continues with this volume’s continued theme of men debasing themselves (willingly or not) for slave-girls.

In a very strange storyline, Brotan happens upon Vanus, an attractive Roman woman. Brotan, fat and lecherous despite (actually due to) his wealth, immediately latches upon the woman, not just due to her beauty but because she treats him like shit. Brotan, having ruled his farm for the past twenty-odd years, is so used to being obeyed by slaves that it takes him for a loop that here, finally, is a woman who tells him where to go.

So what does Brotan do? He turns himself into a slave, following Vanus around and doing everything for her; things get pretty lurid when he makes himself her bed-slave, not there to have sex with her, but to lick her feet after she’s had sex with other men (and women)! In fact Brotan is so thoroughly taken with Vanus that he signs out of his contract on the farm, turning it over to doctor Malen, and decides to stay here in Rome as Vanus’s slave. It’s all very strange.

Once again Frances turns in a short book, about 160 pages, that still seems to be longer, due to the small print and thick chunks of text. As with previous installments, more focus is sometimes placed on telling than showing, and as stated there’s still a distant vibe to the book, same as the ones that came before, of an author who wants to write Roman trash but doesn’t want to get his toga dirty.

Monday, June 3, 2013

Slaves Of The Empire #2: Haesel The Slave


Slaves Of The Empire #2: Haesel The Slave, by Dael Forest
August, 1978  Ballantine Books

This second volume of the Slaves Of The Empire series seems to bear out my theory that the five volumes were planned as (or at least written as) one long book. The story picks up immediately after the preceding installment, with no attempt at filling in readers who might’ve missed the previous volume. Author Dael Forest (aka Stephen Frances) whittles down his sprawling cast this time out, allowing the reader to better appreicate the story. And also he slightly increases the lurid quotient, something apparent from the first pages, which open on an orgy our main protagonist Hadrian attends.

As we’ll recall Hadrian has been hired to build a new town, which he does with the assistance of his co-planner, the slave Haesel, who has a long-simmering sort of thing for Hadrian, and vice versa. But now at this orgy Hadrian also is asked to head up a new Games, so he must figure out how to get animals and prisoners and gladiators for the event; he tasks his chief slave Cornutus with this, so there’s yet another new character to contend with. Meanwhile Haesel’s brothers and sisters still are slaves, except for studly Saelig, who remember had a fling with Hadrian’s wife Areta.

Saelig was whipped very harshly at Areta’s command in the climax of the previous volume, and we discover that Areta is bereft and has gone down to Baiae to mope. Saelig meanwhile has made a full recovery and has forgiven her. So moved by the slave’s obvious love for his wife, Hadrian gives Saelig his freedom. He offers to do so for Haesel as well, but she’s vehemently opposed to the idea; for reasons unexplained, she is determined to remain Hadrian’s slave until he feels that she has rightfully won her freedom. She doesn’t want a free handout, and this rightfully puzzles Hadrian, given how outspoken the girl has been about the unjustness of her slavery.

Meanwhile Haesel’s sister Mertice still pines away for Alexander, despite that he’s given her to the lusty object of his affections, Melanos. As sick as we readers are of seeing Mertice moping around, Melanos orders her chief of slaves to fondle the girl on a daily basis! Melanos herself has some fun; while at the Baths in a nicely-elaborated scene, she runs into Plautus, a young soldier of high family who has just returned to Rome after years away. Frances here really brings to life the decadent atmosphere of the Roman Baths, and the new couple rush back to Melanos’s place to have sex.

Frances does a better job sensationalizing his otherwise tepid soap opera: the long-simmer relationship between Hadrian and Haesel catches a little fire when Haesel gets bitten by a snake on her thigh and Hadrian does the ol’ “suck out the poison” routine. He also has Saelig, now a free man, making obvious moves on Areta. The most lurid sequence though would have to be the very long scene at the Ampitheater (which Frances confusingly refers to as “the Forum”), all of it pretty much taken straight out of Daniel Manix’s Those About To Die, with virgins being raped, prisoners being gutted, and charioteers crashing spectacularly.

I’m still having trouble putting together when this all takes place. The Emperor briefly appears during the Games sequence, but he is not named and we are just informed that he’s old and that there are factions of highborn and soldiers aligning against him. At first I thought a clue might be found in the name of the town Hadrian is building, Trebula, but a cursory Googling reveals that there were three such towns in Italy during the Roman era, and all of them predate the Empire. At any rate the Slaves Of The Empire series definitely takes place after the days of Nero, mentioned here as “long dead.”

The lurid quotient continues apace as Frances dives straight into a chapter-long recounting of a Bona Dea ceremony, as Melanos and her fellow female worshippers strip down, anoit themselves with oil, and get themselves nice and randy so they can set themselves loose on some lucky men of their choosing. In Melanos’s case it is Platus, Frances having built up the anticipation between the two, Melanos abstaining from sex until the night of Bona Dea, and Platus grinning and bearing it.

Platus meanwhile serves to bring more action to the tale, at least indirectly; plotting against the Emperor with others, he maneuvers an assassination attempt which is quickly uncovered, and we learn in passing that Platus has been tortured to death! Oh well, so long Platus. Melanos however finds herself knocked up after that night of Bona Dea passion, so she politely informs Hadrian that she’ll no longer be having casual sex with him. So too does another high-born Roman gal Hadrian has a relationship with, so that within a short span of time Hadrian finds himself without any friends-with-benefits.

This leads to the culmination of the Hadrian-Haesel situation, at least. Growing increasingly short-tempered due to his lack of sex, Hadrian finds himself snapping at others and even checking out the female slaves. Plus Haesel has become more and more distant ever since he sucked the poison out of her thigh, and it gets to the point where Hadrian can’t take it anymore and orders Haesel to remove her tunic in his presence. He’s going to make her his sex-slave whether she likes it or not, even giving her a place of her own and calling on her every once in a while – there will no longer be any need for her to actually work.

But Haesel again turns the tables, going into “slave mode” and telling Hadrian she will do whatever he orders, when Hadrian can easily see that she is against the whole thing. But it all finally leads up to the two having sex, at long last – the trick being that Hadrian breaks down and tells Haesel he can’t order her to love him, he can’t make her do what it is against her nature to do, she can only do what she wants to do, and this it turns out is all Haesel has been waiting to hear.

And with this long-simmer relationship coming at long last to boil, the book abruptly ends. It would probably be smart to go immediately into the third volume, but the placid nature of this series sort of dulls the reader’s senses, so it’s best to take some time between installments. But overall Haesel The Slave was at least more entertaining and sordid than its predecessor, which makes me hope that future volumes will continue the trend.

Thursday, October 11, 2012

Slaves Of The Empire #1: Barba The Slaver


Slaves Of The Empire #1: Barba The Slaver, by Dael Forest
August, 1978 Ballantine Books

This was the start of a five-volume series, originally published in the UK in 1975, which takes place during some unspecified time in the Roman Empire. The author, Stephen Frances posing as “Dael Forest,” namedrops a few people here and there: Poppaea for one is often mentioned, but it’s never stated if in fact this is the same woman who was Nero’s Empress of Rome (or, for that matter, Poppea the Elder). And one of the protagonists is named Hadrian, but it’s certainly not the future emperor. So there's no way to exactly pinpoint when it all takes place.

Anyway, the awesome Boris Vallejo cover and the exploitative title have you expecting a full-on blast of toga porn, but the novel itself is moreso a drawn out soap opera. The story is very domestic, with none of the empire-spanning travel you normally get in such books. Instead everything plays out on an almost humdrum level, not even bothering to play up on the salacious aspect of life in the ancient world.

Five young siblings from Briton are taken captive and imported to Rome as slaves, and I assume they will be the driving force of the series: Haesel, a pretty young girl who hates slavery; Saelig, a good-looking hunk of muscle who makes the ladies quiver; Redwall, who takes up a smidgen of the narrative but thrives in slavery, given his business acumen; Thane, a hot-tempered leader who quickly revolts and therefore is sent into hard labor; and beautiful Mertice, with the flowing blonde hair to her waist who falls in love with her handsome young master.

This first installment is titled “Barba The Slaver,” but Barba himself has little screen time. He’s the Rome-based slavemaster who sells the five youths, but other than a brief scene where he oversees their selling he doesn’t have much to do with the book. I’d imagine the book was named after him for the exploitative effect…which, again, the novel itself really doesn’t have much of.

Instead we hopscotch across a wide group of characters, sometimes from the point of view of the slaves, other times from their masters. Nothing much really happens, and given the book’s short length (barely 160 pages) it comes off more like the opening quarter of a larger novel – my assumption is all five books were written at once, but that might not be so. What I mean is, you could probably just read all five books as one novel.

But really, the multitude of characters overwhelms the paucity of pages…it’s like Frances has a hard time juggling everything and just says to hell with it and spins his wheels. So for one storyline we have Hadrian, intelligent business leader who has been given the job of building a new town. His slave is Haesel, who herself is intelligent, given that she was a high-born Briton. But as mentioned Haesel burns with a hatred of slavery and takes to her new lot in life hard, especially when she begins to grow feelings for Hadrian. Frances appears to be building up something between her and Hadrian, but leaves it open at the end of the novel.

Then there’s Areta, Hadrian’s wife, who has dedicated her life to pleasure and so is very much the cliched Roman harlot-wife. Her daily routine consists of going to the Baths, gossiping, and going home with some random guy – not that Frances ever gets explicit in the least. In fact the whole novel is written in a sort of antiseptic tone, which as I’ve mentioned before I find pretty common in British pulp. Dammit, I want trash, not psuedo-literature!!

Anyway, Areta initiates the novel because she’s envious of the oft-mentioned but never-seen Poppaea, who shows up at the Baths with a studly male slave that has all the women atwitter. Areta wants one of her own. So Hadrian takes her to Barba’s slave shop, where they spot Saelig, who is everything Areta could want. While there Hadrian kills the proverbial two birds by picking up Haesel, not because she’s Saelig’s sister but because he needs a new slave anyway. I guess Barba’s is like the Wal-mart of slave shops, but he does not discount on the double purchase.

The majority of the novel is given over to the interractions between Hadrian and Haesel and Areta and Saelig, with for example much focus given to Areta preparing Saelig for his debut at the Baths, where she’s sure he will be the envy of all the Roman women. Frances also dwells on initially-unrelated characters, like Melanos, a highborn Roman lady who has a casual sex thing with Hadrian and who enjoys competing against men in various pursuits. Frances intimates she might have Sapphic tendencies as well, but doesn’t elaborate.

Then there’s Alexander, studly young Roman of the priviledged class who gets ownership of beautiful Mertice, but doesn’t even notice her given that he owns a few hundred slaves. Mertice notices him, though, and so pines for him throughout the book, in what is by far the most annoying part. In fact Mertice is so stupid and docile that you eventually get a sick delight in her ensuing bad treatment, particularly when Alexander only notices her in his attempts to gain favor with Melanos, whom he lusts for (Melanos meanwhile loathes him).

A problem with the book is not only the similarity of characters and situations but also of names. Frances does himself no favors with character names like Melanos, Mertice, Areta, and even Rheta (Areta’s female slave steward). There are others besides, and it gets to be a chore keeping them apart.

Another problem is the aforementioned lack of events. The novel moves at its own torpid pace, with nothing major occurring. Saelig mimics various people for Areta’s amusement, Areta later throws herself at him demanding that he love her, Hadrian works on his new town with Haesel eventually becoming his right-hand woman, and in the only moment when the novel comes out of its own lastitude Alexander orders Mertice to wrestle another slave-girl, again in the vain hopes of gaining Melanos’s favor.

What’s missing is the sense of escapism one looks for in historical fiction, or the feeling of a lost age. Frances relates it all in a casual, offhand manner. I guess that could be seen as part of the book’s charm; whereas other Rome-centric historical fiction goes big and flashy, Frances here instead plays it low key and subdued, but still. When you read a novel titled Barba The Slaver which is announced as the first installment of a series called Slaves Of The Empire, you want something more than “low key.”