If only the locals would just stop killing each other and if only it were possible to find a decent glass of wine, and someone who can cook, Ruso's prospects would. In this rebellious island, he is called to examine the body of a slave girl. It's up to Ruso to summon all his skills to investigate, even though the breakthroughs in forensic science lie centuries in the future, and the murderer may be hunting him down too. It’s a very different sort of book from the Medicus series and clearly not a mystery, but I’ve been fascinated to see how the story’s come alive as my colleagues have pitched in with their own imaginative take on events. Ruth Downie, Medicus The first of a series set in Roman Britain, Medicus tells the story of a disillusioned Roman army doctor, Gaius Petreius Ruso, sent to the barbarian north of the empire: Britannia. Although several of the characters appear all the way through, each of us handles the story from a different viewpoint and we all have very different styles, so for example while I’m seeing events through the eyes of a slave girl in Boudica’s household, the tales involving battles are written by people who are far more skilled at that sort of thing than I am (two of them are re-enactors who’ve actually worn the kit, done the marching and handled the weaponry). It’s somewhere between 140,000 and 160,000 words long – I forget exactly, sorry – and about 20,000 of them are mine. Hi Kathryn! “A Year of Ravens” is a collection of supposedly stand-alone tales by 7 authors that actually fit together to tell the story of the Boudican rebellion.
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