Ooph – this was at times fascinating and enchanting, and at others, well, a slog. This book will best be enjoyed by people with a fairly strong background in ancient history and an interest in very detailed explanations of Roman politics, war, and class struggle. The author brought Caesar and his family to life for me, which I enjoyed. The depth of detail and abundant Latin terms made me wonder if the book wanted to be narrative non-fiction rather than historical fiction. I really wanted it to be more of a leisurely experience and much less academic in nature; I would have enjoyed it much more.

Thank you to Random House Publishing Group - Ballantine, Ballantine Books, Netgalley, and the author for early access to this work.

I read this for the Julius Caesar of it all and stayed for the page turningness. I really enjoyed this and learned so much.

I LOVED this book. Wow. I thought I knew what to expect with this story, but it was so much better than expected. Great writing, and interesting characters. Even though this is a long book, it kept my attention and I wanted to keep reading it all the time. Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a digital ARC of this book.

I am Rome is a fabulous well written historical fiction set in Ancient Rome one of my top favorite sets for this kind of novel.

The structure and format are clever with short chapters or sometimes scene breaks, different points of view, and flashbacks that balance the trial (in the novel's present time) with Caesar's childhood. It adds information on the characters and historical events (battles, betrayals, arranged marriages, or even murders) that justify and explain how young Caesar is prosecuting one of the cruelest, dishonorable, and corrupt senators putting justice for Rome above the safety of his life of his family.

Focused on show-not-tell the author gives us detailed insight into many aspects of Caeser's life but also goes to the length of proving a point by describing an entire battle in detail just to let us know (for example) why Marius advises his young nephew never to enter a battle he can't win.

These 600-and-something pages display a profound knowledge of the culture and historical events the fiction helps not making it a dull textbook. At the same time it has a very modern feeling and fighting corrupt politicians who silence witnesses with death or threats is still very relatable (unfortunately) to our times.

Caesar and Cornelia are my favorite characters and I loved their relationship. Everyone expects the young Caesar twenty-three years old to fail but he will accept to face this senator in trial with honor and powerful tools: knowledge and intelligence.

This will remain one of my favorite historical novels for a long time.

Thank you Netgalley and Publisher for this e-ARC.

In this historical fiction novel, Santiago Posteguillo transports readers to ancient Rome. Young lawyer Julius Caesar faces a high-stakes case, pitting him against corrupt former governor Gnaeus Cornelius Dolabella. The book offers vivid insights into Roman history, though the storytelling style can be slow. Overall, it’s a captivating read for history enthusiasts.

This was definitely something I normally wouldn’t read but I did find it to be a good slow burn. I would recommend it and say don’t give up keep on reading it and you won’t be disappointed.

***ARC received from Ballantine Books and NetGalley in exchange for honest review, opinions are all my own. Thank you!***

I will be the first to admit that ancient Roman history is not my area of expertise but this book did interest me. This time of history is incredibly interesting and this books does a good job of covering it if it does feel a little disjointed.

For a book that is supposed to be about Julius Caesar it spends a huge chunk of its time on things other than Julius Caesar. It also jumps between the past and the present, sometimes sections of history that have nothing to do with Caesar. While I think it is trying to flesh out the back story of Caesar some felt like they were more about telling other characters history than Rome itself. They were interesting scenes but they really didn’t add anything to the story, even so I still liked reading on the history of the characters. It adds to their story even if not the overall story which was a shame and left me wondering if the book had stayed a little more focused if it would have been a better less disjointed story.

Caesar as a character is fine, if not a little too perfect. Everything he does it carefully constructed, even his supposed failures are potentially well calculated plans. Its a problem sometimes with court dramas that the attorneys are just a little too infallible and sometimes Caesar crosses that line. He is still an interesting character who is young and making mistakes but it would have been okay for him to have a few more flaws. I do think my favorite parts of the book are the women. Cornelia and Aurelia are strong females in a world that was very male dominated. Caesar at least seemed to know when to defer to the women in his life. And Caesar’s devotion to Cornelia is nice, refusing to set her aside when his life was potentially on the line. Secondary characters are somewhat fleshed out depending on which side they are on and there are a lot of secondary characters due to the nature of the book.

The books antagonists Sulla and Dolabella, were the weakest parts of the book. Both men are cast as so terrible they almost become caricatures of villains when compared to the righteous Caesar and other characters, including Gaius Marius. They lack depth as characters and just seem to be there to remind the readers how good Caesar is in comparison. While the two do have some interesting scenes, particularly during battles, there is one scene that felt like it didn’t belong at all. Almost written as though to bring some level of shock value to the book with how depraved these two men are, a scene the book didn’t need at all. The characters are already bad, the book has well established that and the scene went on far longer than was necessary to the point I started to skim through it. I don’t need depictions of graphic violence like that, war scenes are one thing this just felt over the stop.

I really liked when the book focused on the complexities of Roman politics and the court system itself. Who has power, how they gain and remain in power through bribes, strength and corruption.

Since this is a translated book sometimes dialogue and descriptions can get a bit stilted or unnatural to an English reader but I had no problem following along. Many of the descriptions of daily Roman life were interesting and the battles were easy to follow. Sometimes battle sequences in books can get a little chaotic and this book managed to handle that well even in the translation.

In the end I did like parts of I Am Rome but as a whole it felt a little disjointed. Scenes carried on longer than necessary, the jumps between time lines were not hard to follow but distracted from the main storyline. Perhaps with the backstory out of the way the second book is a little more straight forward, I would be interested to read it once translated.

Thank you to Random House - Ballantine and Netgalley for an ARC in exchange for my honest review.

I can’t be 100% sure because this is a translation and maybe I just don’t like this particular translator, but I absolutely hated the writing style. The dialogue felt unnatural, there were multiple contradictions in the few chapters I read, and I had a hard time following it. I was also absolutely bored. Sometimes historical fiction is a miss for me, and this was so far off the mark. DNFed about 5 chapters in but I couldn’t read another 550+ pages.

This book was just so interesting to me, the historical-fiction mix was soo good! We have THE Julius Cesar, who is a lawyer, trying to take down corruption in the city of Rome. This senator has everyone on his payroll, how is Julius going to do all of this?? This book gets dark and showed us the bad things that may have happened in those times.

I think the translation was good. The story in general felt a bit disjointed and difficult for me to follow.

I’ve aways found Rome interesting, so I was looking forward to reading the novel. Unfortunately, the novel did not fulfull my interest. There were way too many characters, and I struggled with the plot. The story was well researched and the writing was nicely done.

Thank you Santigo Posteguillo, Random House Books, and NetGalley for the opportunity of reading and reviewing the book.

I'm not well-versed enough in Roman history and the history of Caesar to be able to comment on the historical inaccuracies, so I will leave that to other reviewers. From what I could notice though, there were definitely liberties taken and changes made, which in some cases is understandable, but in others is rather odd. Some of the side characters we may not have a lot of accurate information on, but Caesar is a very well-known historical figure with quite a bit of information about his life. The original Spanish cover of this book featured the tagline "the true history of Julius Caesar", which is something I'm glad was removed from the English translation, as it's basically stating this book is completely accurate, which it is not.

This book is part John Grisham legal thriller and part military strategy and battle. It jumps between timelines, with the present being the trial of Sulla, and the past moving from Caesar as a child, to his teenage years, and then into adulthood. It also features side parts dealing with other people in Caesar's life, such as his uncle Gaius Marius, his future wife Cornelia, and people who were sided with Sulla, such as Dolabella. Now I understand that the author wanted to set up the conflicts between Caesar, Sulla, and Dolabella, but it was taken way too far. Dolabella and Sulla are both characterized as villains with absolutely no redeeming qualities. They are brutal, sadistic, power hungry men who only care about riches and alcohol and women. Towards the end there is a scene involving Sulla, Dolabella, and a bunch of slaves that just seemed rather ridiculous. Caesar, on the other hand, is written as the hero who can do no wrong. It is basically the Mary Sue and the Villain archetypes, which is frustrating as these were real people with much more depth to them who deserve to be written better.

There are some instances where you can see the story trying to shine through. You can feel the frustrations of the people of Rome and those that were conquered, the tenseness and fear of battle, and the hopes of those trying to do what is right. However, they mostly get overshadowed by the rest of the story, as Caesar's heroics and Sulla and Dolabella's villainy have to be center stage. Had each of these people been written with a more realistic edge instead of by archetypes, it could have shifted the story greatly.

This isn't a terrible book, but I think those who are knowledgable about Roman history, particularly involving the times of Caesar, will find themselves frustrated at the liberties taken with the story and characters.

Thank you so much to NetGalley and Santiago Posteguillo for providing me with a complimentary digital ARC for I Am Rome coming out March 5, 2024. The honest opinions expressed in this review are my own.

This is the first book I’ve read by this author. I love learning more about Ancient Rome, so I was really excited to check this out. I think it felt more like historical nonfiction to me. It was really well-researched and had a lot of detail about Julius Caesar. I was thinking it would be more like fiction. I would’ve liked a little more dialogue. I think it was a little long for me. But I really enjoyed the story. I think it was very similar to a Julius Caesar movie I watched a long time ago. I would check out more books by this author.

I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys books about Ancient Rome!

A challenging read. Fans of Roman history and historical fiction might enjoy this big novel about Caesar's rise to power- if they are patient and can deal with Latin in the text. This is heavy on minutia about Rome, which is interesting and oddly light on character and emotion. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. I'm sure others will appreciate this more than I did.

I received an ARC from the publisher through NetGalley.

DNF at 5%

The writing style was completely not for me, unfortunately. The author chose to bounce in the time line and the entire narrative structure was basically delivered through very dense info-dumps in diagolue format. I am sure that the content is well-researched from the limited amount that I read, but the stylistic choice to break up the narrative into chunks to establish background, the initial petitioning of Caesar by the Macedonians for representation, then delving into the memories of Caesar's mother was just not a format I enjoy. This format continued through the rest of the book with a piece of the trial being followed by, what one would assume, is a relevant series of memories from an associated person.

I love Roman history, but will have to skip this one. I will also decline to rate this book on Goodreads/StoryGraph.

I cannot figure out who the audience for this book is meant to be. It goes into obsessive detail on random aspects of late republic Roman life, leaving little bits of latin untranslated until endnotes, but it also overexpounds on basic facts that anyone who's enough of a fan of ancient Rome would already know.

The whole book is over repetitive and stilted, constantly rehashing things said two paragraphs ago. Characters go on didactic lectures for paragraphs at a time, sometimes explainable in universe as part of the trial, but frequently also when speaking to friends or family, talking in ways that no human would ever bother doing.

I can't figure out if the books failings are a failure of the translation, or a failure of the source material, but I can't imagine this book achieving the massive popularity it claims to have abroad with English speaking readers. The whole thing is overlong, repetitive, and quite dull.

If it were edited to be half its length, I could easily give it four stars, but as it stands, I barely want to give it two. I wouldn't recommend it to anyone, and I will not be reading any follow ons.

I would like to thank NetGalley and Ballantine Books for providing me with an advance e-galley of this book in exchange for an honest review. Look for it in your local and online bookstores and libraries on March 5, 2024.

This was a struggle to read and I didn't really care for the pacing or narrative planning. I wanted to love it. I liked elements so I will definitely look for more books by Posteguillo.


Thank you to NetGalley for this ARC. All opinions expressed are my own.

Maybe it’s the translation. but this book is a bunch of words without much story. There’s no narrative ARC to capture my interest. DNF.

I did not know quite what to expect when I delved into I am Rome by Santiago Posteguillo. But what I soon discovered on the pages intrigued me. History, law, politics, prophecy... so many elements were woven together with this novel. Having only studied Julius Caesar from an academic standpoint, this book succeeded in adding a whole new dimension to my perspective on this captivating man.
Dynamic, captivating, and rife with tension, I am Rome is worth the read. With its shifting plot and compelling characters, readers cannot help but fall into the pages.
I received this book from Netgalley. All opinions are my own.