Another immersive book by Stephen Dando-Collins

I've always greatly enjoyed the books by Stephen Dando-Collins for their sheer immersiveness and have listened to nearly all of them here at Audible. My favorites are probably "Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome" and "Rise of an Empire:How One Man United Greece to Defeat Xerxes's Persians.

Although not as much of an emotional journey or action-packed as the above two titles, you are soon immersed in the era and intrigued by the figure of Caligula. The book starts with an interesting introduction where the author dispels some common myths, considers a few hypotheses and mentions his sources used. After that sources are also referred to occasionally but not without breaking the pace of the book. After that it's a smooth ride from start to finish. As can be expected, there are quite a few names and family relations that are not always as easy to keep track of but with a bit foreknowledge it should not be overwhelming.

There was the occasional (although brief) annoyance when the narrator completely mispronounced French and Latin (place)names. For example the famous general "Lucullus" was pronouned as "Lusullus". The French town of "Beane" as "Bee-own" and "Nîmes" as "Knees-mes". Also in expressons like "Pièce de résistance" the word "pièce" is pronounced as "peace". The name "Vercingetorix" ended up as "Ver-Sin-Gay-TOH-ricks". In short: how an American tourist would pronounce it - but from a professional narrator you expect more. After all, with some minor research this could easily have been avoided.

All in all, definitely listen to this book if you want to have a brief foray into the life of Caligula!

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