Book
Shadow of the Eagle
Book 1 in the Borderlands series.
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AD 78. Faustus Valerianus, the son of a Roman veteran and a British woman taken captive during Claudius’s invasion, sells the family farm and enters the army. His mixed inheritance makes service under Governor Gnaeus Julius Agricola more complicated than the training ground admits: Rome offers rank and belonging, while the people being conquered include communities to which his mother’s life and memory still bind him.
Agricola’s campaign carries Faustus north through six years of fighting and culminates among the Caledonian mountains at Mons Graupius. Family ghosts, the friendship of fellow soldiers and his attachment to Constantia repeatedly challenge the disciplined Roman identity he is trying to construct. The novel treats conquest from both imperial and native perspectives, asking whether Faustus can serve Rome without accepting every claim Rome makes about the land it occupies.