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Title: Not too bad, but the series continues to decline
Review: I really enjoyed the First Man in Rome, and while I still follow the series and moderately enjoy reading the stuff, it's certainly not a patch on Robert Graves for quality of writing or Suetoneus, Plutarch, Asimov, or any of the many good histories of Rome as history. If you have a real enthusiasm for the period, the setting alone may well overcome the absurdly modern dialogue and the considerable obviousness of the plot development - and the book is by no means bad. However, in my opinion the imagination and the thoroghly researched historical setting, which were the hallmarks of the first book, have declined considerably in subsequent volumes.
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