Read this book in 2007, and its a most splendid standalone book about the eruption of Vesuvius, and its two main witnesses, the engineer, Marcus Attilius Primus, and the scholar and commander of the navy, Pliny.

It tells the story, which is set in August, the disaster that will take place and that will set the world around Pompeii and the Roman world on fire.

With the Roman Navy at Misenum, tourists in Baiae, Herculaneum and Pompeii, and engineer Attilius, a decent and reliable man, heads towards the aquaduct to repair it, before the reservoir runs dry.

With a promise to Pliny that repairs will be successful, not knowing what is about to happen when he gets to that place, Attilius and Pliny and many other people in that area will encounter a disaster that is unbeknown to each and everyone, and that will cost the lives of many.

What is follow is a terrific tale about the historical events about the eruption of Vesuvius and the consequences it will bring to human lives, and all this is brought to us, particularly from the views of the engineer Attilius and the scientist Pliny, in a most magnificent fashion.

Highly recommended, for this is a superb standalone novel about the Roman history about and around the eruption of Vesuvius, and that's why I like to call this book: "A Wonderful Eruption Of Vesuvius Tale"!

Think you have pressure at work? Consider Marcus Attilius Primus. He just received an important promotion from Rome. The young engineer is now the Aquarius, in charge of the immense aqueduct serving the entire bay of Naples. His predecessor has mysteriously disappeared. His workers are surly. The water supply is interrupted. And then he gets on the wrong side of one of the richest men around, a cruel former slave, the behind-the-scenes political boss of Pompeii. Of course, he does have a very beautiful daughter who appeals to Attilius for help.

There’s trouble bubbling up for our hero, and it’s not just political corruption, bribes, missing persons, and bad plumbing. There’s something very strange about the high, flat-topped mountain close to the aqueduct. Odd rumblings, strange gases, and earth tremors have been coming from Vesuvius in the past few days.

This is a disaster thriller that will keep you flipping the pages late into the night. Will the hero be able to save the heroine, or will she need to save him, or is everyone going to end up toast in the explosive conclusion?

I went through a stage where anything set in this time frame, in this part of the world, was enough to keep me enthralled. This one was terrific.

Setting: Pompeii, Campania Region, Roman Empire (Italy); A.D.79.
In the days preceding the infamous eruption of Mount Vesuvius, a water engineer has arrived from Rome to remedy the region's water shortage caused by the failure of the Aqua Augusta, the greatest aqueduct in the world. The engineer, Attilius, ends up involved in the affairs of a corrupt millionaire and his family in Herculaneum - an involvement that puts his life at risk.....
This was an intriguing historical novel - I found the details of the engineering that the Romans had undertaken in order to provide water to the settlements (we take the supply of water for granted!) and the descriptions of the volcanic eruptions totally fascinating. The story was fast-moving, even though it only covered a few days before, during and after the eruption, and very readable. I have not read any books by this author before but, on the basis of this one, I will be looking out for more - 8/10.

I've become a huge Robert Harris fan, and in many ways, this is the best yet. Harris has captured life in the Roman Empire as well as Sidebottom, and he's thrown in a complex mystery to boot. It doesn't hurt that Vesuvius looms in the background, belching sulfur and making the ground tremble. A rip-roaring, action-packed thriller with marvelous history. Thanks to Harris for continuing to start fresh with new characters, place, and time. Eventually, he'll hit on a series and we won't get gems like this.

The mountain was not done with them yet. He heard a woman scream and raised his eyes. Faint and miraculous, far in the distance and yet growing in intensity, he saw a corona of fire in the sky.

The light traveled slowly downward from right to left. A sickle of luminous cloud-that was how Pliny described it-sweeping down the western slope of Vesuvius, leaving in its wake a patchwork of fires. Some were winking, isolated pinpricks-farmhouses and villas that had been set alight. Elsewhere whole swaths of the forest were blazing. Vivid, leaping sheets of red-and-orange flame tore jagged holes in the darkness. The scythe moved on, implacably, for at least as long as it would’ve taken to count to a hundred, flared briefly, and vanished.

“The manifestation,” dictated Pliny, “has moved into a different phase.”

First, I have to comment about the reality that this book is based on. This is not a horror book, but the events portrayed here were absolutely horrifying. What happened to the people living in Pompeii and Herculaneum in 79 AD was terrifying on multiple levels, especially with little understanding of what was happening. It rained rocks and ash. Clouds of noxious, hot gas swept through the towns. Eventually pyroclastic surges came and boiled people’s blood and organs in their bodies as they attempted to hide from what was coming, mothers holding their children, couples embracing, people gripping tightly coins and jewels or whatever valuables they had, even dogs curled up next to their owners. 2000 years later, the sadness and horror these people experienced is relatable on a purely human level that is sometimes lost when we look at historical events. We’ve all seen the plaster casts of the victims-this book gives them a real face, a personality, a tangible life. It’s done wonderfully. When the eruption begins, the book is virtually impossible to put down.

At first, I was so caught up in the story that I nearly forgot I was reading a book about the eruption. Yet, the book never really lets you forget. Vesuvius is always there, lurking in the background. We get a mix of real (Pliny the Elder) characters, and fictional. The plot revolves around Marcus Attilius, an Aquarius from Rome who has come to the Bay of Naples to fix a problem with the local aqueducts. The reader knows why they are failing, and it can be painful watching the Attilius and his men desperately trying to figure out what is wrong and fix the problem.

We get beautiful descriptions of life in Ancient Rome here-the sights, smells and sounds of the city as Attilius arrives on a great Roman trireme. Pliny is portrayed wonderfully as he documents every phase of Vesuvius’s eruption. We see the famous decadence of Rome as well as their brilliance.

The writing is excellent, as I expected as this is now my second Harris book. He really knows how to say a lot with a little, which is a remarkable skill for a writer. There’s no doubt I’ll be reading more by him. I found this to be superior to Archangel, though that was an excellent read as well.

Although the eruption becomes front and center, this is a story about much more than just a volcano. It’s immersive historical fiction at its finest, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Ancient Rome.

A most interesting take on the well known tale. Robert Harris is a favourite author.

Historical fiction about the eruption of Mount Vesuvius, covering a period of four days in 79 A.D. Attilius is an Aquarius, an engineer in charge of ensuring the water supply, of the Bay of Naples region. Attilius has been sent by Rome to replace the previous Aquarius, who has disappeared. The plot revolves around the Aqua Augusta, which has been damaged by natural phenomena.

The pace is somewhat slow in the beginning but picks up pace as it proceeds. The author introduces a number of characters, including Pliny the Elder, though they take secondary importance to the natural disaster. The narrative provides plenty of period details, showing the way of life of the residents and how much they stand to lose. Subplots relate to power, corruption, ambition, greed, romance, jealousy, and overindulgences.

Harris has created a compelling narrative, despite an ending that is already known. He maintains dramatic tension by showing the gradual build-up of pressure prior to the cataclysmic event that the reader knows is coming, but the characters do not. Both the storyline and epigraphs of each chapter are filled with history and science (volcanology, hydrology, geology). Recommended to those interested in a nature-driven survival story that educates while it entertains.

One cataclysmic disaster can ruin your whole day, but at least it has the advantage of surprise. That's more than can usually be said for stories about cataclysmic disasters, which lumber toward their climax like some bore telling a multipart joke you've already heard. Who honestly didn't feel the urge to push a few heads under water to speed up James Cameron's interminable "Titanic"? We endure documentaries about German aerodynamics because we want to see the Hindenburg in flames. "Oh, the banality!"

Robert Harris confronts this very problem in his new novel about the explosion of Vesuvius, called simply "Pompeii." When the story opens on Aug. 22, AD 79, we know that by the end of the week, none of these characters will be shouting "TGIF." But how to fill the pages till that moment when the mountain erupts with a force 100,000 times as strong as the Hiroshima atomic bomb, shooting magma at a speed of Mach 1?

Harris admits that he just barely avoided disaster himself. After observing the United States for more than a year, he had intended to write a novel set in the near future. "The story I had in mind," he says, "might loosely be described as 'The Walt Disney Company takes over the world': a thriller about a utopia going horribly wrong," but "the characters stubbornly refused to come alive and the subject remained as flimsy as smoke." Or, perhaps he realized that Julian Barnes had already written that novel brilliantly just three years ago in "England, England." But for whatever reason, we've been spared another Brit's satire of America ("Vernon God Little" is enough to endure for this season), and given this terrifically engaging novel instead.

The key to Harris's success is his concentration on a crisis that preceded the volcano's eruption by two days. Back in 33 BC, the Romans had constructed a 60-mile aqueduct that eventually served towns all along the Bay of Naples, giving rise to a culture and an economy that floated high on the presumption of dependable, clean water. When a break in the main line begins shutting off one town after another, only Marcus Attilius Primus knows how to save the day.

Attilius, as he's called, is a young widower, a water engineer from a long line of water engineers, who's just been appointed to Misenum, home to a Roman fleet. His early weeks on the job have been rough: His predecessor has vanished mysteriously, his staff mocks his authority, and now the water has stopped flowing for the first time in 100 years, threatening to plunge a quarter of a million people into dry chaos.

Piecing together reports from travelers about the status of other towns along the coast, Attilius quickly deduces that the break must be some- where near Pompeii. As the reservoir drains in Misenum, he secures permission from Pliny the Elder (wonderfully brought back to life here) and heads out with a small, reluctant crew.

The passage of 2,000 years has not diminished the technical dimensions of this task - nor the social risks of failure. Harris conveys the modern elements of this ancient life with startling effect.

One can't help considering the two crumbling tunnels that supply New York City with all of its water. Let's hope there are many Attiliuses toiling away on Tunnel No. 3, to be completed in 2020. (Sip slowly, New Yorkers.)

In fact, what's even more interesting than the mechanical aspects of this ancient system are the moral developments that Harris traces through these characters. First-century Romans enjoyed the benefits of a remarkably advanced system of commerce, science, and art, but their society was dogged by that familiar triumvirate of corruption, cruelty, and sloth. Attilius emerges as a timeless hero, a man driven by duty but animated by compassion, courageous enough to fight nature, but wise enough to fear its fury. His struggle to solve this engineering crisis, fend off his mutinying workers, and resist the grief that always threatens to wash back over him makes him an utterly fascinating and sympathetic character. And though he's far removed from the sophisticated economy humming around him, he demonstrates that essential requirement for a successful market economy: integrity.

But in the literary tradition of all great struggles, the flashier part goes to the villain. Numerius Popidius Ampliatus rose from slave to master the modern way: insider trading. Cruel and clever, he's both Caligula and Ken Lay. We meet him on the afternoon he's trying to generate a little entertainment by feeding a servant to the eels. Attilius interferes, earning Ampliatus's rage and his daughter's heart. But this self-made crook owns a heavily mortgaged empire of bathhouses that need cheap water so he pretends to support Attilius's emergency efforts - at least until he can kill him.

Of course, while our hero races against the clock to stave off a collapse of the aqueduct and avoid being murdered, we know that his clock is about to be blasted away by one of history's most spectacular natural disasters. Harris marks the passing hours and minutes with fanciful precision at the beginning of each chapter, along with pithy quotations from volcano experts ancient and modern.

If the present-day dialogue sounds a bit incongruous in togas and the romance a bit forced, such minor objections are quickly blasted away. When the moment finally arrives - a column of magma shooting miles into the sky - the story rises spectacularly to convey the surreal conditions that tortured these people for days: the sea filled with pumice, the ground rolling in waves, whole towns flash-burned, asphyxiated, and then sealed beneath tons of ash.

But Harris hasn't brought those haunting, calcified forms to life just for the sport of entombing them again 2,000 years later. The light he shines on that awesome crisis, and the way good and bad people responded, illuminates our continued dependence on the most fundamental elements - a stable earth and a righteous man.

http://www.csmonitor.com/2003/1118/p1...

My girlfriend's drunken "aunt" insisted I read this book, and apparently she has good taste. It's an interesting mix of pulp, disaster, apocalyptic and historical fiction. The writing is clear, the pacing brisk and the characters are immediately identifiable as separate individuals despite their unwieldy name-chains. The excerpts from modern scientific discourses on vulcanology which open each chapter, coupled with the quotations from classical authors in the body of the text, help ground the narrative in reality and contextualize everything that happens in the narrative.

The author deserves a special literary award for the way in which he presents various characters' attempts to understand the natural phenomena which are occurring around them -- he clearly understands that people in the past were not idiots and that our modern scientific knowledge is the product of millennia of individual and cultural contributions. Thus, when Pliny (yes, THAT Pliny) suggests that the earthquakes they are experiencing are the result of the celestial spheres vibrating in disharmony, he is not presented as a superstitious, ignorant clod for modern readers to chuckle over. Harris does not make the beliefs and "science" of the era seem absurd nor does he make the characters who hold to them seem excessively credulous (an all-too-common feature of historical fiction), and he does not make his protagonists characters with an absurdly modern perspective on science and society (another all-too-common feature of the genre).

Harris also does an excellent job of presenting a world already in motion, rife with plots and schemes and lives which would have been absolutely fascinating in their own right even if they hadn't been interrupted by the eruption of Vesuvius.

It should be a Two-For-One: A suspense novel to take to the beach; and some insight into life in the Roman Empire and the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius. (And maybe a small tutorial in primitive plumbing.) Unfortunately, it turns into an 0-For-One.

The plot is serviceable. Marcus Attilius Primus is an engineer newly in charge of the section of aqueduct that services Pompeii. He investigates the mysterious failure of the water supply and along the way, discovers that his predecessor was corrupt. He falls in love and is stalked by bad guys who want to shut him off permanently. Meanwhile, Vesuvius prepares to make it all moot.

But the characters are caricatures. The hero is REALLY, REALLY NOBLE, the villain is AWFULLY, AWFULLY EVIL, and the love interest is darned good looking. Life in the Empire is similarly exaggerated with lingering attention to the grotesque and decadent but almost nothing about how most people lived.

I was relieved when Vesuvius erupted.

Mein erster Harris und ich liebe ihn. Tolle Geschichte auch wenn das Ende bekannt sein dürfte. Ich bin ja von Pompeji richtig begeistert und war auch schon zwei mal bei der Ausgrabung. Deshalb war ich auch etwas skeptisch was den Roman angeht. Aber Harris hat eine spannende Geschcihte um die Katastrophe gebaut die mich überzeugen konnte. Ab und an hat er sich ein wenig viel künstlerische Freiheit genommen. Aber auch damit konnte ich leben!

Das war definitiv nicht mein letzeter Harris :)