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Title: Good idea, lazy execution
Review: The main appeal of alternate history is the contrast between our known world and what might have been in whatever hypothetical scenario the author envisions. "The Alteration" by Kingsley Amis engagingly suggested a credible world where the Reformation had never taken place, and Robert Harris' "Fatherland" did the same for a Nazi victory. These and other successful alternative histories work because of the detail of the imagined world. "Romanitas" is really a potboiler airport thriller, despite its literary pretensions. For this book to be interesting and to live up to its cover illustration and tag-line, I want to know what the vehicles and buildings look like, how Roman society has survived for 2500 years, how this imaginary geopolitical system works. All the author has done is replace greek etymology with latin ("longdictor" instead of "telephone", "birota" for "bicycle"), and placed a rather formulaic chase plot into a lame, half-developed setting.
