Año 441 d.C. El Imperio romano, aunque arruinado y al borde del colapso, todavía no ha sido vencido. Las arcas del tesoro están vacías, las legiones agotadas y los emperadores hacen gala de holgazanería e incompetencia. Las tribus de visigodos y vándalos ya no son enemigas y empiezan a asentarse pacíficamente dentro de sus fronteras. Serán otros bárbaros, llegados del lejano oriente, los que acabarán con este coloso milenario: los hunos al mando del salvaje Atila.
Atila ha regresado con su pueblo tras un traicionero exilio. Desterrado por su tío, ha vagado por las estepas durante más de treinta años mientras su cólera y su ambición crecían día a día. Ahora, ha vuelto para ocupar el tropo que por derecho le pertenece. Sin embargo, el control de su pueblo no es el límite de su ambición: unificará a todos los clanes hunos a lo largo y ancho de la salvaje Escitia y los forjará en un único y poderoso ejército. Sólo entonces, con este poder inimaginable bajo su mando, se lanzará sobre Roma.

This is the second of a trilogy and I will definitely head backwards to read the first part.

At times, this book mesmerized me with descriptions of being not CIVILIZED but being ALIVE. It continuous to amaze me that guys like Attila and Genghis are largely forgotten but a movies about King Arthur comes out every year. They're stories are filled with honor and grandeur blood-lust.

( )

In every way a leap up from the first.

For thirty pages I was uncertain; before page fifty I was won. Won by Attila, whom Napier has ambition to portray as a truly great man – and succeeds, for me. Won also by description of the steppe. The first had an element of fantasy; this doesn’t, but I was put in mind of fantasy whenever we journey over the steppe: description both very real in local detail and a little surreal, and just the sense of the unexplored, the strange (yet not fantastic) landscapes to be met with. Won, thirdly, by a philosophical vein in the book.

That’s largely from the person of Attila. Attila gave his first speech around page fifty, or more of a contemplation aloud over the campfire, for three pages. Near the end of the book we have a chapter called, ‘Attila Speaks, the Council Listens’ and that’s his fieriest speech, for seven pages. I was electrified by both. But it’s daring, isn’t it, it’s stretching the expectations of histfic – Attila speaks, for several pages, and when I tell you he quotes from a kindred spirit, he gives you a couple of proverbs from ‘The Marriage of Heaven and Hell’, you’re going to talk about trespasses against histfic, maybe. I happen to be an admirer of William Blake as of Attila, and I can see where their thoughts about the world might intersect. Does that make me the audience for this book?

There are two ways in which this is not the straightest of straight histfic. I can get bored with the straightest of the straight, so I’m happy with both of these: they either crank up my brain or they fire my imagination. I’ve told you one; the other has to do with history.

The plot of this second is, Attila unites the steppe. Black Huns, White Huns, the monstrous Kutrigur Huns, once-Huns who have settled and corrupted: by means fair or foul he has them declare a brotherhood, to be one army, Huns undistinguished, against the settled world. We visit the steppe from end to end; Attila has travel tales from his thirty years of exile, he has seen the Yellow River and the Great Wall, he has been to the Huns’ lost home in the Ordos. There you have it. Attila’s Huns keep a memory of China, and the name of China does not cross their lips – until Attila is bold enough, not only to remind them of their old humiliations, but to forge a nomad army and march, first against Rome and next, against the original enemy, the other empire that has done the Huns wrong. For Rome and China are two imperial peas in a pod, to nomad eyes, and Attila has speeches to tell you why.

Now, this can’t exactly be called historical. It draws on history before and after. I think he has drawn on Attila’s later distant cousin, Genghis – both for Attila’s life story, and for this grand conception of conquest east and west. These Huns can sing the Mongols’ origin legends, and the Turkic epic Manas. Of this I’m going to say, Napier widens history. He fits more history in. He has a time period, but he draws into that strands from before and after, because he wants to talk about historical issues – large ones. He wants to talk about the settled and the steppe, and to that end Attila, steppe spokesman, knows things he can’t have known, travels further than in any likelihood he did. As I say, this is fine by me, and makes for a fiction that comments on history.

There’s a Roman interlude, to keep us up to date with Rome and Constantinople. This wasn’t a trot-through, for me; I cared about the people we meet – Aetius and Athenais – and I’m glued to the page by his style. The scandal-sheet was a riot, as were the deviant adventures of Galla Placida’s daughter. Though the latter stopped being funny when she has a hideous forced abortion. Napier always has a heart for the unfortunate, and though awful things happen in this book, he writes about them with humanity. Only once or twice do I think his love of description runs away with him so that he glories in the porridge brains out the saucepan of the skull. With descriptive skills like his, I understand an ill-judged one or two. ( )

Book Two of Napier's novelization of the life of Attila the Hun. The first book covered his upbringing as a hostage held by the Romans, as well as his escape and journey back to Hun territory. That book ended with young Attila being banished from his homeland by his uncle, whom he had suspected of killing his father to usurp the throne.

Fast-forward 30 years. Attila has grown up as a nomad on the steppes, although Napier elects not to detail much of this period. He returns to his tribe, taking charge as the rightful king. He then embarks on a trip to unite the three largest factions of Huns, which in turn attract many of the smaller groups resulting in a vast horde that will presume to attack the Roman Empire in the west, before swinging back to tackle their ancient enemy in the east, China. The Roman Empire is split between the scholarly Theodosius II in the east and the weak, decadent Valentinian in the west, In response to the threat posed by the Hunnish hordes, Attila's old childhood friend, Aetius, is recalled from exile among Theodoric and the Visigoths.

The story is written from the point of view of a historian/scribe in the Byzantine court. Aside from not being an eye witness to the accounts described, the prose often seems a little awkward and inconsistent. Napier also diverts several times to flesh out the background of minor characters that don't really have an impact on the story. It's not that their stories are always uninteresting, just unnecessary. ( )

Three stars. It would have been four, but see below.

Napier is a talented storyteller, making his characters personable and approachable making for an easy fun read. He does tend to modernize them, attributing current day emotional responses to primitive and barbaric peoples (including the Romans). There are two seperate story threads going on , the one over Attila is fairly obvious, but the thread and character of the British legionary is so far, totally unnecessary. As is the mysticism. I wonder if Napier really wanted to write a fantasy novel rather than historic fiction. The combined effect of that cost a star.

I will continue the series, it's just not quite something I would recommend to others. ( )