Unhinged Emperors in the Ancient Mediterranean + Anthony Horowitz series you should read

This is our first episode, and we're starting our journey in the ancient Mediterranean. Welcome to the Book and the Vibe, a mostly historical fiction podcast. I'm your host, Helen Gabay, a former corporate executive who recently traded conference calls for books, travel, and the places that stories take us. I live near Richmond, Virginia, and I say mostly historical fiction this week because while our main review will always be of a historical fiction book, you can count on me to sometimes bring a second bonus review on a modern mystery. Do you reach for historical fiction often, but maybe not exclusively, and want to know what kind of world you will inhabit inside your next book? If so, you're in the right place. We are all about spoiler-free book reviews founded on the joy of getting lost in a story. We talk about atmosphere and vibe for readers who love immersive books and who yearn to explore the places and times they read about. Today in the main review, we'll review what I consider to be a five-star read about one of history's most notorious emperors. And I will also tell you what's so special about London bookstores. Then, in our Unearthed segment, we'll talk about three incredibly bizarre behaviors exhibited by one of the most infamous and cruel emperors in history. We'll then head to the tavern where we'll serve up a bonus review set in and around Hastings and written by one of my favorite prolific writers turning out mystery stories today. By the end of the show, you'll have picked up some interesting historical tidbits and know if you want to add these books to your to be read list. So, pour yourself a glass of something red, but make sure no one poisoned it. And let's talk about Nero, set in the first century AD by Con Igledon. Now, Kahn Igledon is an author I started reading this year and am now fully hooked on. Nero, as you may have guessed, is the story of this infamous emperor's family, childhood, and rise to power, an eventual reign in ancient Rome. If you like slightly unhinged, powerful families, imperial politics of the personal kind, and books where everyone is scheming across every page to survive or rise, you're going to want to pick this up. Really quickly, you may be asking yourself why we chose Nero as our first book to review for the podcast. Well, I'll tell you. First, this is the first book of a trilogy, and the final book was very recently released, so it was now a completed trilogy you can pick up. Secondly, we recently bought plane tickets to spend 10 days in Italy, so fair warning, you may see some books set in Italy in the Roman Empire pop up here and there this season. But for Nero, the first thing you'll want to know is that he is only five years old by the end of the book. I know, now you're asking, then what on earth is this book about, Helen? But stick with me. Nero starts with a very dramatic chariot ride, with Nero's father, who is racing to Rome to save his family, but not really willingly. I won't spoil anything else about the plot, but he also happens to be a famous chariot racer. That much you learn in the first couple of pages, as you also learn you have landed in the fascinating time a few decades after Julius Caesar's assassination, and you're firmly in a society ruled largely through the incredibly messy, slightly incestuous family that historians call the Julio-Claudian dynasty, and the Roman Republic is now a memory. By the way, give the family tree for these guys a quick look, but don't try too hard to understand it because it simply raises more questions than answers, because no tree in the real world resembles this thing. If this were pure fiction and not historical fiction, you'd be forgiven for writing some of the bigger events off as too outlandish to be believable. This is prestige soap for men and women, and I love that kind of story when it's written convincingly. There's betrayal, adoption, marriage, divorce, exile, and poison. But ambition is the most potent element present, and everyone is relentlessly sorting everyone that comes into their orbit into one of three camps. Who's useful, who's dangerous, and who needs to completely disappear. Now, if Nero is only five years old by the end of the book, what is it about? Well, it's about his mother, Agrippina the Younger. Have you heard of her? I had not, and knew nothing about her when I started the book, and was surprised she was the center of the book. The reason I was surprised is down to the logistics of how I found this book, more on that airhead moment I had a little later. My immediate impression after reading this was if there is one thing to intrigue you to read this story, I would say it is this. By the end of her life, Agrippina was a sister to one emperor who was utterly insane. She was then the wife of a stuttering, somewhat fumbling emperor who became emperor simply because he was the last guy standing. And finally, she was the mother to the infamous Emperor Nero. Mother, sister, and wife to three different emperors. So you can't tell me the story behind building that resume isn't going to be a great read if you have a good author, and luckily we do for this book. While it's pretty common knowledge, Nero was known for some serious debauchery in his time. Agrippina is also the sister of the spectacularly unstable and equally infamous emperor Caligula. And, in this author's hands, Agrippina rivals both of these men for her ability to manipulate and influence history with the hand she's been dealt. Agrippina is ambitious, strategic, and beyond ruthless when she needs to be, perfectly capable of ripping her own heart out at a moment's notice if that's what she needs to do. She is everywhere at all times, but also can shrink down and appear meek when she needs to to fit societal expectations. She is calculating and becoming exactly what the man she's influencing needs her to truly be from one moment to the next. And this behavior is fascinating instead of annoying here, especially since influencing men is virtually the only agency available to her given the time she lives in and the circumstance. And she's quite good at it. And you have to admire her, but she does some really awful things along the way. But frankly, you really start to understand at a bone deep level why she does these things as more of the pages turn. On a related note, do you ever wonder why people living in prehistory or ancient times are so fascinating and such fertile ground for books like this? In the case of ancient Romans, I think we find them mesmerizing because they have very relatable human emotions and we certainly recognize ourselves, but so many of their customs and societal norms are utterly alien to us. So we end up with this equation where we get to sit and ponder how would we personally respond in this alien world? What if we grew up with a sibling who could, with one word, indulge their petty jealousies and rivalries from childhood and who had the power to exact their revenge on us in spectacularly deadly fashion at any given moment? Are you picturing your sibling or cousins in childhood now? Is it no big deal? Or are you starting to get mildly concerned? In other words, the absolute power held by emperors takes everything to the next level. Someone may experience some pretty dark stuff from their imperial relatives. They may be poisoned at Sunday dinner or forced to commit suicide in shame, or perhaps bricked up in a wall to die or banished to live or literally live in a dark room for years on end. Needless to say, the stakes in this particularly human yet alien environment make for excellent reading. The book is narrated in third person, and that was a smart choice because while this is certainly largely Agrippina story, we do get to bounce around a little bit and inhabit alternative head spaces. And this absolutely adds to the propulsiveness of the narrative without feeling jarring when it occurs. I ended up reading Nero because I accidentally bought the sequel to it in the historical fiction section of a London bookstore without realizing it was book two. My excuse for this oversight is that when I'm traveling, one of my indulgences is going into bookstores and letting myself buy physical books without researching them first. So when I sat down and got ready to read Tyrant, which is the name of the second book, I realized it was the second in the trilogy. So of course I immediately downloaded and began Nero on my Kindle. Let me insert a five-second PSA for you guys on the topic of London bookstores. Most all of them have actual sections dedicated to historical fiction that are quite sizable. They also have a lot of tables with spy books, which is another favorite genre of mine. I went solo to London last time, and this allowed me to browse a lot and come home with, frankly, an embarrassing number of books in my suitcase. But let's talk characters from Nero. They are mostly people you don't necessarily like, but you cannot turn away from the situations they get into. Of course, it's also filled with real historical figures as well as those woven in for the sake of the story, and all of them are written with a sure hand by Igledon. Claudius, for example, the emperor famous for stuttering, but also considered incredibly bright, is portrayed as very human here. The book weaves in his physical ailments, including his piles, which, yes, is a digestive issue, and yes, it comes up and is gross. But it does not make him a total joke. You see how he wielded power in spite of his physical ailments, but you also see how they were exploited by those closest to him at times. As for Agrippina, she is not written as a woman with modern sensibility. She is also not turned into a misunderstood heroine lost from history. Honestly, I don't know if I liked her or not, but I could not stop reading about the daily drama she dealt with and schemes she started into motion. Although this is high drama with blood and betrayal ever present, this never comes close to tipping into melodrama. I also found the prose to be very easy to read, something this author is certainly known for. However, the dialogue feels authentic enough to the time period, so it does not break the spell. Let's briefly touch on the dramatic events and big historical moments the author chose to include. Since I don't do spoilers, I'll simply say this is one of those historical fiction books that sent me to Google pretty frequently. On our Google the reality scale, something I just made up, let's say on a scale of one to five, I give it a three for frequency I wanted to check in with Google on accuracy. I mostly looked up the big stuff that felt over the top. I had to know did that really happen? Was that relationship real? Did this person actually die that way? And very often the answer was yes. Two big questions for any first book in a trilogy. Number one, do I want to keep reading the other books in the series? Yes. By the end of this book, I was 100% interested in seeing how Con Igledon would ultimately choose to portray Nero as a teen and in his adult years after seeing the unhinged world he grew up in. I've already read the second book, which I'll bring as a brief bonus review in a future episode. And I have the final book in the trilogy checked out from the library right now. The second question to ask about the first book of a trilogy or a series is can you read the first book without progressing further and without feeling shortchanged? And I guess related to that question, which we'll call 2B, is how big is the cliffhanger at the end of the first book? In the case of Nero, you certainly could go straight into book two if that's how you like to read. However, if you don't want to keep reading the series after the first book, you'll be glad to know it wraps up enough to be a satisfying read entirely on its own without any major cliffhangers. But I bet you want to keep going to see what else happens. So now let's quickly talk about stats before we move on to our unearthed segment. Nero is about 430 pages, which felt like the perfect length. I read it in about three days. I give it five stars. And I did put about three or four books between this and the sequel. It was strong enough that I was tempted to go straight into the next book, but I do like to take a break between books in a series to prevent burnout. Do you guys do that or do you read straight through a series? Goodreads averages this at 4.19 stars with about 5,000 ratings. I think most reviews that didn't give it five stars are largely because people expected it to be about Nero when this first one is about his mother. But now you know it's about his mother to start. And if you want to sit in the front row and watch what it may have been like to be sister, wife, and mother to three different emperors with three wildly different personalities, then pick up Nero by Con Igledon. Let's go to our unearthed segment where we pull up a piece of real history, context, gossip, or weirdness that makes the book more fun to read. But without spoiling the plot. Have you heard or read about Nero's uncle Caligula? There's no way Agrippina's brother, Caligula, was not at least a little certifiably insane. And I think there's simply no way that his behavior and legend did not influence and at times inspire Nero during his reign. So let's talk about Nero's insane uncle Caligula and three things that Caligula did that have historians still debating the mental health of this entire dynasty of rulers that came fairly close on the heels of Julius Caesar. Number three, Caligula was not unique in ordering executions, but how was he unique in his style? Well, he was known to insist that the immediate family of the executed person dine with him immediately after the execution, expecting the grieving spouse or children or parents to laugh, drink, and be impressed with his stories and jokes over dinner, all while he watched them closely for signs of disloyalty. I mean, talk about needing a poker face to survive. Number two, when Caligula was on military campaign near the English Channel in 40 AD, he abandoned the invasion at the French shore just before crossing and ordered his soldiers to draw their swords, slice at the ocean's wave, and gather up seashells in what he called the spoils of the sea. Okay, there's got to be more to it, I know. And to be fair, he did likely order this as part of his penchant for humiliating people who displeased him. The Roman legions had become openly terrified of crossing the channel as they progressed, and modern historians suggest Caligula demanded that they carry out this truly bizarre behavior and follow his orders to capture the sea cells as a form of humiliation to punish their fear over the crossing. I think being around Caligula was somewhat like the ancient version of a gangster making everyone uneasy, constantly wondering if and when he will flip from maybe jovial to disturbing, like when Joe Pesci asks Ray Leota if he thinks he's a funny guy and good fellas, which brings us to the number one thing, in my opinion, that best illustrates Caligula's crazy behavior. He had a favorite racehorse that lived in a marble stable and all-around outlandish amounts of comfort that were more on par with human royalty than horse. Caligula continually claimed he was going to name the horse as a Roman consul, which was the highest political office representing the people at the time. Now many historians argue it was simply a threat intended to be a political insult, but apparently he took it far enough that I'm calling it a loose screw. Caligula promoted this horse to the office of official priest within his personal imperial cult. We won't even talk about the fact that he had a personal imperial cult. He regularly had the horse join imperial dinners when he was hosting senators, forcing guests to raise their glasses and toast to the horse's long life while the horse was wandering around the dinner tables. And on top of this, there were no less than 18 slaves whose sole purpose was to care for this one horse. And here's my favorite part invitations to dinner were even sent out and signed as if it came from the horse itself, inviting people to be the horse's guest in his living space, which was filled with fine furniture. So I'm calling Caligula unhinged at the very least. But in his nephew Nero's case, Con Eggledon seems to be going all in on exploring nature versus nurture in his series about Nero. Speaking of weird characters, let's head to the tavern now, where today we'll serve up a bonus review of the 2026 release entitled A Deadly Episode by Anthony Horowitz, which is the sixth book in his Hawthorne and Horowitz mystery series, with the very weird character Horowitz, but why am I bringing a sixth book and a series to you? Don't worry, I'm going to talk about this in a way that you can decide if the series itself, instead of just the sixth book, is a good fit for you or not. Let me explain the setup. Anthony Horowitz writes himself into these books as a fictionalized version of Anthony Horowitz, the author, the TV writer, the mystery writer, and generally very successful person who still somehow lets almost everyone in these books walk all over him. He is paired with the fictional Daniel Hawthorne, a former detective who is brilliant and irritating, secretive, and someone I personally can't decide if I want to follow around for days on end or just avoid altogether. And I think Horowitz feels the same way about Hawthorne. And on the page, this tension is high entertainment. But here's what makes number six unique and the series itself worth getting into the whole series is meta. And by the time you get to a deadly episode, the series has started to get meta upon meta and something the author earns writing over several books. By the sixth book itself, one of the fictionalized Horowitz-Hawthorne true crime books is being turned into a film. So we have real life author Horowitz writing fictional Anthony Horowitz, who wrote a fictional true crime book about a made-up detective. And now that book is being adapted into a film. And of course, the inevitable murder occurs. And somehow it does not collapse under its own cleverness. Instead, we delight in it as a reader. And it's a challenging premise, yes, but it's pulled off seamlessly. In fact, I honestly think Horowitz writes in his sleep. He seems to crank out so much copy. And I think he genuinely enjoys challenging himself in real life. I do think you could technically read a deadly episode, the sixth one, as a standalone, but I would not recommend it. And I don't really think any of the books in the series are significantly better or worse than each other. They're all quite good. And the later books do spoil some of the pieces of the broader story arc and the Horowitz Hawthorne dynamic really builds over time. If I were to describe the vibe of this series, it's kind of like an 80s sitcom cast has wandered onto the PBS murder mystery of the week, but they kept the really good writers around to tell you the story. So if this sounds appealing, I'd start with the word is murder and read in order. And then if you like it, you have a great series to take on vacations or plane rides for a while, since the series is up to six books. I read the most recent release over the Fourth of July at The Lake where I wanted a mystery, but this one had, and truly the entire series has, enough nuance and writing chops, so I don't feel like I'm reading the equivalent of a bag of flays potato chips, as I think one so often feels after some modern mysteries and thrillers being churned out with words like lake, husband, or cabin on them. Am I missing any other words? Probably. I think this could be a fun game. Name the words used in the latest thriller release. All right, back to the series and a few more things that make it a great hang. Just like historical fiction can let you travel into a different era or place. This series lets you visit a different world, that of famous writers, TV producers, movie directors, famous actors, agents, and more from this life. In one of the earlier installments, the mystery centers around a theater production, and another centers around the publication process of a book. And at times we visit the filming of his work turned into a TV miniseries or a movie. If I remember correctly, Steven Spielberg even makes it into one of the books. Did the interaction really happen? Who knows? One can't help but wonder how much Horowitz is pulling from his real life. And if his friends point to his creations on the page and ask him at their next get together, hey, is this supposed to be me? Well, the author clearly loves London and England. And even though this series is set in modern day, he has a really strong sense of place and adds in the odd historical detail. Horowitz paints vivid characters and does so quickly and memorably, which matters in a mystery. I need to remember who the people are without constantly flipping back and forth and trying to remember the suspects. I personally don't make any mental notes or try to solve the mystery when I read these books. I'm really in it for the story more than the puzzle. Horowitz is also a fun guy to spend time with. He's funny in a dry, self deprecating way. He has no problem using his own flaws as part of the joke, and I admire that. Fictional Horowitz is constantly trying to have one normal. Conversation with Hawthorne just does not end in Hawthorne making him feel like an idiot. It's a little like Lucy and Charlie Brown with the football. Every time you think Horowitz might finally get the answer, get some respect, get the upper hand, or just get a clean emotional moment with Hawthorne. Hawthorne yanks the football away, and it is funny to me every single time. Let's wrap up with the stats. I usually read these in a small handful of days. The pages fly by, and I'd say they all come in between four and a quarter to five stars, with the latest sixth installment at a solid 4.5 stars. Talked just a little because the ending was a bit abrupt to me and we didn't really get any meaningful additions to the backstory of Hawthorne, which is a big part of the series arc and something I really wanted some more of. Here's who would enjoy this. Bottom line, if you like smart modern mysteries and dry British humor, if you think behind the scenes of book publishing or TV series creation sounds interesting, if you think a detective sidekick dynamic that is funny and awkward and increasingly tense would be enjoyable, if you like the idea of a modern-day London and its rotating cast of surrounding towns to be a big part of the story, then try the Hawthorne and Horowitz series by Anthony Horowitz. Now, before we close out with our note from the road, I'll let you know that after spending some time in sunny but scary Italy in our main review this week, we're going to the Dark Ages of Britain, or as most historians call it now, sub-Roman Britain in our next episode. We'll sign off each week with a note from the road, since this podcast is also about the places our books inspire us to travel. And we're going to wrap up back with our Italian theme. However, since I have not yet been to Rome, where Nero was set, let's touch on where I have already been in Italy, which includes Florence. So it was just my husband and I when we went, we left the kid with grandparents, and my husband absolutely loved the city. I did too. My husband really loved it. Something he kept pointing out that I never would have noticed was that the doors in Florence were almost all gorgeous and heavy wood to begin with. But he also noticed they almost all had the most unique, large, statement-making door knockers you've ever seen. I'll post pictures if I can find some in our notes from the road section on the website. But picture giant lion heads, geometric shapes, shields, grotesque faces, hands folded in prayer with ornate rings, and also made out of various materials. And apparently there's a way to read into these door knockers. And the resident's choice of knocker shape and material said something about them and the personality of the house household, such as this is a humorous family, or someone that wanted you to know about their family lineage, or someone that wanted you to feel warm and welcome, or wanted you to know you should mind your banners here. It was something I never would have noticed, and it became something we really enjoyed looking at the rest of our time there. It's not too surprising Tim picked up on this since he is a residential contractor and highly skilled carpenter. So Rome is not his first pick for our next trip, but I am looking forward to his unique take on what he enjoys while we are there, because we we do tend to have diverging sensibilities sometimes when we travel, but really that makes it interesting. On a related note, we are headed to Italy again on a trip, this time with the kid in tow to Rome and Sicily. So if you have any sites you think are a must-see or any great historical fiction books you think I should read that are set in Rome or Sicily, I'd love your suggestions. Email me at thebookandhevibe at gmail.com or go to thebookandhevibe.com and send me a note. Well, that concludes our inaugural episode. Thank you for spending your time with me this week. May this be the year you read a book about a castle while you're staying at a castle, or whatever your historical fiction loving heart desires.