Eschewed Obfuscation

Overall, this series is pretty good as far as mysteries go. Saylor's prose is crisp and concise, the characters are well-developed (especially Gordianus's family), and the setting is captivating. I'm not usually a big fan of the mystery genre, but this and John Maddox Roberts's SPQR series are the exceptions (though the two are very different in protagonist and length). Each volume has its own merits and drawbacks, so I'll review them briefly.


And now, a collection of short stories in the series, which I'm sure everyone is tired of hearing about by now. Saylor's shorts possess most of the pros of his novels without many of the cons (chiefly, clunky blocks of setting description). While some of the stories were a bit too summarized, others certainly made me smile.