To Forestall the Darkness

The plague had depopulated Italy in the Sixth Century. Decades of war had destroyed it. Industry, agriculture, commerce and city life had stopped.

The Romans cowered under their Germanic overlords until the brutality they endured propels one of them to the shrine of his household gods. For hours he stands before those pre-Christian, forbidden gods, his arms raised in supplication, his head covered with the old-fashioned toga. It is stained with blood.

Dozens of his household slaves gather to gawk at him just standing there. Hours pass. Finally he turns to state in measured voice, “It shall not stand.”

One of his household asks him to clarify and he shouts, “Our subjugation shall not stand!”

—

To Forestall the Darkness is historical fiction. But while it teems with violence, mystery and betrayal, it is neither a romp through decadence, nor a detective story nor a military saga. It is a serious novel of Ancient Rome like Steven Saylor’s Roman Blood, or Gary Jennings’s Raptor.

Its setting is the twilight of Antiquity—the Sixth Century—when the traditions of Rome collided with the customs of the Germanic invaders. The Sixth Century was the pivotal century.

Even at this late date things could have gone either way. The Western world did not need to slip into an abnegation of everything human as it awaited the End of Days. There was still a chance that the accumulated culture of the Roman people—the skills, the technologies, the optimistic world-view—would continue. Titus Tribonius tries to make it so.

He fails, of course, but fails triumphantly.

—

Tribonian Trilogy, Part 1

Third Edition

588 pages, 158,000 words

eBook and Paperback