Avid readers of these reviews (there are quite a lot of you out there now, apparently!) will know that I love books set in Constantinople and that I find Theodora irresistible. I mean, come on – the exotic dancer and prostitute who became Empress, and not just as decoration either, she was actually running the show to a large extent. Alright, in this series she is the bad guy, vicious and sadistic, but that's fine: a woman like her is going to have enemies by the boatload and that is how they are going to see her.
I also like John the Eunuch, Justinian's Lord Chancellor, who is one of those enemies. Through no fault of his own, I may say. She just has it in for him. She will do anything to destroy him and his influence over her husband, and in this book very nearly succeeds.
Speaking of John the Eunuch, I notice that the series has been renamed. While the first five books bore the legend "a John the Eunuch Mystery" on the cover beneath the title, this one is "a John the Lord Chamberlain Mystery". Why? Have the publishers decided the word "eunuch" is in some way offensive? Or – don't tell me – not "politically correct"?
Anyway, the book opens with John being arrested by his friend Felix for the murder of a senator. I do not want to give anything away here, and it's difficult not to. I'll simply say that John is sent into exile in Egypt with his servant Peter and his "wife" Cornelia, the bull-dancer, and from then on the chapters alternate between what is happening in Constantinople and what happens in Alexandria. This is not a good idea. Nothing much is happening in Constantinople and you want to get on with what happens to John in Alexandria. I ended up skipping alternate chapters.
Another problem is that while the first three or four books of this series did (or at least could) stand alone to a large extent, the last couple do not. Without already knowing John's relationship with Justinian and Theodora, and the fact that he and Felix and Anatolius are not Christians but secret worshippers of Mithras, and how he comes to have a wife and daughter, and thus and so forth, you will not like this book.
It is also, to be honest, something of a pot-boiler, and I hope the next one, Seven For A Secret, marks a return to the high standard we have come to expect from the authors of the John the Eunuch Mysteries.
MBG
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