[ICS]⇒ PDF Cast Not the Day Paul Waters 9780330452687 Books

Cast Not the Day Paul Waters 9780330452687 Books

Download As PDF : Cast Not the Day Paul Waters 9780330452687 Books

Cast Not the Day Paul Waters 9780330452687 Books

A moving book. The characters immediately involving. Beatifully written. Brings late roman empire and province of britania to life.
The author does seem to have a consistent anti -Christian bias, depicting them as a mixture of Taliban and american evangelicals. However he is entitled to his view and he waves it in the story line with authenticity and quietness.
Well written and atmosphere on every page.


Tags : Cast Not the Day [Paul Waters] on Amazon.com. *FREE* shipping on qualifying offers. By the middle of fourth century AD, Britain and the Roman Empire had been ruled for a generation by Christian emperors. Now,Paul Waters,Cast Not the Day,Pan Books,0330452681

Cast Not the Day Paul Waters 9780330452687 Books Reviews

I love historical fiction and Paul Waters is another great writer i somehow missed, but now i am catching up.
a little bit over the top in credibility, but I enjoyed it very much
I first read a positive review of Paul Water's book, "Cast Not Your Day" in the British journal, "The Tablet." This inspired me to purchase the book through 's at an excellent price, and I eagerly read the book from cover-to-cover within two days. Overall, the book is easy to read, the story flows in an interesting manner, and the character development holds the reader's attention.

Nevertheless, the story lacks depth and ends in an unsatisfactory manner with many issues, developed within the narrative,being unresolved. The period of history in which the story unfolds is a fascinating one, set in London in the middle of the fourth century of the Christian era A time of great threat and conflict between the Imperial political tensions of the time, the constant threat of Saxon invasion, and the unfolding of Christianity as a power challenging the established religious order.

It is here that the text begins to oversimplify and even trivialise the context in which the story develops. A black and white scenario develops in which ALL Christians are seen to be tainted by evil and corruption - the sordid schemes of the nefarious bishop who personifies all that is greed and self-seeking, the deviousness of the main woman in the novel - a Christian megalomaniac pushing her son towards power in the church, and finally the unruly Christian mob bent on destruction and even murder at the behest of those that control them. Within the novel there is no instance of appropriateness exhibited by any single Christian character.

The complex political intrigues of the age are summarised by the Waters in two pages in an "author's note' at the end of the novel. May I suggest that he looks at the glossary of historical events and appropriate terminology that Colleen McCullough uses in her historical novels - something that is missing in this text and which would have been a most appropriate insertion.

The novel ends with the main protagonists - Drusus and Marcellus - being left in a unfinished stance as to their individual futures. As I read the last pages of the novel, I asked myself the question, "What next? what happened? What does the future hold for both of these young men who have already experienced so much anguish, adventure, unrequited love, injustice, etc. Perhaps this development will occur within the next novel by Waters - but he does not set up the possibility of a sequel within the unfinished story. What will the effect be of the "unseen enemies observing our self-inflicted weakness... biding their time and sharpening their swords" (final paragraph of the book) on the development of the two main characters? Unless Paul Waters does write a sequel, I guess, that we will never know...

Overall, an interesting, but unsatisfactory book. Two stars out of five, at best.
I am not going to tell you the story of this novel. The other reviewers have done a good job with that. Instead, I would like to reply to some of the criticism expressed in those reviews.

While it is true that the Christians are portrayed as all evil, I think the author was trying to give you another perspective on the 4th Century Roman world. As he said in his afterword, we have always been taught that Christianity was unequivocally accepted as soon as it was made the official religion. With the new research that has been done in this field, we know that is not the entire truth. The author gives us the other side of the coin. There were many people who still remained faithful to the old relgion and Waters has done a good job of portraying that.

I also felt that Drusus was a fully realized character. We watch him develop from a boy into a man who understands the difference between the search for the good and the ignorance that is all around him. He is a complex, feeling character.

While it is true that the novel ends abruptly, that is because there is a sequel, "The Philospher Prince", which takes up the story of Drusus and Marcellus.

I thoroughly enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who is interested in Rome toward the end of the Empire. It's well written, historically accurate, and engrossing.
A moving book. The characters immediately involving. Beatifully written. Brings late roman empire and province of britania to life.
The author does seem to have a consistent anti -Christian bias, depicting them as a mixture of Taliban and american evangelicals. However he is entitled to his view and he waves it in the story line with authenticity and quietness.
Well written and atmosphere on every page.