{Empire 12-14} - Anthony Riches

Written by Anthony Riches
Read by Saul Reichlin (XII, XIII) Damian Lynch (XIV)
Format: M4B
Bitrate: 128 Kbps
Unabridged

Empire XII: Vengeance
Author(s): Anthony Riches
Narrator(s): Saul Reichlin
Length: 12 hr 23 min
Audio , 44.1 kHz, Stereo
Language: English

Book Rating:
Overall: ★★★★★
Perform: ★★★★★
Story: ★★★★★

After saving the Empire’s richest province from a foreign army, Marcus and the men who protect him have been in hiding. Their lives will be forfeit if they are seen in Rome.

But times have changed. Marcus’s protector, the patrician legion commander Scaurus, has been summoned home by his mentor, a powerful senator who has decided he must act to save the empire from its debauched ruler’s reign of terror.

Rome is a hotbed of conspiracy and treachery and the senator is not the only contender for power. The emperor himself plans to destroy those he mistrusts, and no-one is safe.

Marcus is assigned his own, unique role in the conspiracy. He will become a gladiator once more. But this time, his only opponent will be Commodus himself….

///////

Empire XIII: Storm of War

Author(s): Anthony Riches
Narrator(s): Saul Reichlin
Length: 11 hr 39 min
Audio , 44.1 kHz, Stereo

Book Rating:
Overall: ★★★★★
Perform: ★★★★★
Story: ★★★★★

A new civil war has begun: with the emperor Pertinax’s murder Marcus and his protector Scaurus have escaped Rome, seeking sanctuary for their familia in the East.

But they are soon pressed back into service by Septimius Severus, the ruthless commander who has seized the imperial capital and who holds the military balance of power over his two rivals.

Niger, the would-be emperor in the East is on the march with six legions, and Scaurus’s legion is ordered to Thrace as a sacrificial advance guard, tasked with delaying them. Whatever the cost….

///////

Empire XIV: Clash of Legions

Author(s): Anthony Riches
Narrator(s): Damian Lynch
Length: 10 hr 35 min
Audio , 44.1 kHz, Stereo

Book Rating:
Overall: ★★★★
Perform: ★★★
Story: ★★★★½

Two emperors - one must fall.

Marcus Aquila and his patron Rutlius Scaurus have fought a superior enemy force to a standstill in Thracia, gaining the favour of the gods but paying a grievous cost in their family’s blood. Battle-weary and mourning their losses, they are tasked with rooting out a spy ring operating in the lands into which their imperial master Severus’s armies are advancing.

Hunting down informers operating under the skilled and ruthless command of their sworn enemy Sartorius, spymaster to the usurper Niger, will not be easy. But the potential to turn his intelligence network, and thereby deceive and distract the enemy, might land a war-winning blow on the army of the east.

The quest to find and subvert their foes’ informers will place the two friends at great risk, with torture and death the price of any mistake. While success will put them in the front rank of a bitter battle against battle hardened legions, hungry for revenge, in a bloody struggle to determine the fate of Asia’s loyalty.

And Scaurus is a man with a powerful threat still hanging over him, a curse imploring the gods to fell him at the very moment of his greatest victory.