Fires of Alexandria: Book One of the Alexandrian Saga by Thomas K. Carpenter
This is historical fiction based on some facts but with an extremely implausible story. I usually enjoy ancient history and gave it a good try.
The famous Heron, genius and inventor, lived in Alexandria, Egypt during the first century, A.D. The Roman Empire had taken control of the city and tensions were high. In this story, the twin sister of Heron posed as the great man after his death, and was under pressure to find the real cause of the fire—from 100 years earlier—that burned a large part of the Library of Alexandria. She was also creating steampunk-like war machines to fight the Romans.
The prose is not very skilled; it lacks editing, which took away from the interesting story. Don’t even get me started on editing—it’s what I do for a living. If the errors had been made during ebook conversion, it would have been somewhat more forgivable.
There was a lot of repetition and the story dragged for me. The plot involved several elements that were too disparate to reconcile, and the “mystery” couldn’t really be solved. However, the characters were well-drawn and interesting, which made up for a lot. Still, I won’t be rushing out to continue this series.