Sarmatian

Name: Sarmatian
Rating: 4.5 (1055 reviews)

by Peter Darman Book 13 in the Parthian Chronicles series.

First published 2019

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4.5(1,055)

Set in the northern Parthian frontier in the later first century BCE, during a major incursion from the steppe, war is a jealous lover who is reluctant to release me from her embrace.
Pacorus, now retired from the politics of Parthia, embarks on a journey to request the high king find a place in the empire for his Egyptian protégé, who has been offered the governorship of Roman-controlled Egypt, as well as to discover the whereabouts of his former squire.
But Queen Gallia’s assassins have unwittingly set in motion a sequence of events that will plunge the empire into peril, as well as endangering the King of Dura himself. When an invading horde of barbarians sweeps into Parthia from the north and crushes everything in its path, Pacorus is once again forced to unsheathe his sword.
But old allies cannot be relied upon and Pacorus is not the great warlord of old. With an untrustworthy high king and a cunning adversary to face, he is soon faced with his greatest challenge: saving the Parthian Empire itself.

The northern approaches to Parthia connected the Iranian world with the Eurasian steppe. Sarmatian and related mounted peoples could move quickly across those open frontiers, and their cavalry traditions made them formidable opponents. The invasion in the novel therefore shifts the military problem away from Roman legions toward a mobile enemy whose strength resembles some of Parthia's own most effective methods of war.