This book was fantastic

I was unsure on whether it was for me but as soon as I started it I was hooked, the time travel, the science, the drama and the history. So so good. I also loved the little twist at the end.

Did not finish. Not the type of book I enjoy. I gave it a good try, but just couldn't waste my time any longer.

Thanks to NetGalley and Imbrifex Books for the opportunity to read A Coin for the Ferryman by Megan Edwards and narrated by Mark Ashby in exchange for an honest review.

A Coin For The Ferryman combines a visceral love of history, time travel moral questions, and "like ,what do you think Caesar would make of Las Vegas?"

When Cassandra, a borderline prodigy in Latin, hits her version of rock bottom after discovering the guy of her dreams is actually happily married and lets her friend talk her into taking a paid date at a Vegas casino – her whole life changes. One benevolent billionaire later Cassandra finds herself involved in quite possibly the biggest scientific discovery ever – time travel.

As you can, probably guess - things do not go as planned.

With a premise like “bringing Caesar through time a few minutes before he dies just to see what happens”, expectations are high.

But is it good?

Primarily yes… but a few ‘no’s.

There’s a lot to love about A Coin For The Ferryman – it’s genuinely funny. Like laugh out loud on the bus funny, especially for classicists and ancient historians.

Megan Edwards does a really good job of discussing the moral issues around time travel, live experimentation, the human propensity to act first think later, and the fact that every historical figure is actually a person.
The most central ‘no’s for me are a few practicalities that can largely be excused by the fact that it is, after all, fiction.
- An astonishing number of people are told time travel is real and Caesar is either here or coming, and their response is, “Whaaat? No… Really? You know what, actually, I totally believe you and don’t think you’re having some kind of crisis.”
- That *time travel* is solved scientifically from zero to a hundred in one lifetime, and the hardware is so successfully built that you can go from proof of concept to moving a coin, a dog, and a whole person so quickly.

I don’t have major issues about the 48 hour love that develops between Cassandra and Caesar. Cassandra might be a Latin Genius TM but she’s not exactly street smart. Not to mention that the heady cocktail of trauma bonding, guilt, rebound romance, and overt daddy issues make for a – in my opinion – pretty realistic representation of a person blindly thinking they’re in love.

Similarly, I’m on Faith’s side. Her concerns are legitimate and her treatment as the company villain is bullshit. What I hate more though, is that it makes perfect sense. New female colleague has relationship with powerful project director, he’s an ass, relationship over, she’s treated like shit by everyone while boss man gets an eyeroll and the same level of respect as before.

The writing itself is clean and engaging, I liked the various characters – even the ones I wanted to punch, and I read it in one day because I couldn’t put it down. There is a lot of detail, backstories and context and foreshadowing – it’s an immersive story. I did enjoy the audiobook, the narration was a little slow for me but that’s what playback speed is for.

Are you ready to time travel with Julius Cesar? I wasn't either, but Megan Edwards makes it worth your while in her new novel, A Coin for the Ferryman.
I have been here for all of the recent books that have come out with a nod towards ancient Greek or Latin history. Edwards nods at Julius Cesar and then teleports him into a modern day science lab. What could go wrong?
We are served fancy dinner parties, car chases, and rides across the sky on spiral wings... and i didn't roll my eyes once. There are a few distracting side stories and unnecessary romances, but I was impressed with Edwards ability to keep me believing in this ridiculous story. Classic literature this is not, but if you want to time travel with a hero from the classics, buckle up and don't forget your coin!

What would you say to Caesar if you could travel in time? This is the premise of A Coin for the Ferryman, where a barmaid-cum-linguistics student finds herself rubbing shoulders with Nobel scientists, historians researchers and the seedy underbelly of antiquities dealing. And Caesar, of course.

The bare bones of the story are good, and it's an intriguing idea, but for me, I struggled. with it. It was a *good* book, but not a *great* one. I like the idea of time travel; I like the concept, but it was a bit flat.I found the pacing all over the shop, and at times I struggled to maintain interest. I could see it working well as a screenplay or telemovie - it had a very "mid 1980's" feel to it as I read.

Having said that, however, I will come back to this book again with fresh eyes when I"m in the mood for time travel,

I had this both as an ebook and an audiobook, and found myself listening to the audiobook over the ebook, as the narrator helped maintain my interest. I'm new to audiobooks, and the narrator on this one was an excellent introduction to them

~Many thanks to NetGalley for a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review~

This book wasn't for me. It's my fault for requesting a time travel story, because they don't seem to be my cup of tea. I am sure this is book is great for people who love time travel (and things that go into it) and Julius Caesar.

This book was one of the best books I read in a long time. The characters’ backstories at the beginning of the book made me fall in love with all the characters in different ways. Cassandra is one of my favorite female protagonists in a while. She’s smart and beautiful but will work hard for every thing she has. Her and Caesar’s adventure keeps me listening to this fantastic book and waiting to see what will happen next for the due. The set up for the book is a bit longer than necessary but it was fun and entertaining so it was worth the long wait to finally meet Caesar.

I'm going to start with the comments on the audiobook in particular first. The narration was... underwhelming. While I think Mark Ashby has a very pleasant voice, and is very talented, this talent didn't always shine. On the one hand; when characters were speaking, the direct lines were incredible. They were filled with emotion and showed clear differences between all the characters. This book also included A LOT of languages, which must have been difficult too. Obviously English, but also French, German and Latin and a bit of Ancient Greek. I'm not 100% sure if there was Spain, there might have been, but if there was it wasn't much. Now, I am Dutch, and we learn English, French and German in junior high school and high school. In my particular case, I also learned Latin and Ancient Greek. I wasn't very good at languages, and even now I can only sorta understand French and German if I read it . So I'm by no means an expert. I think the narrator did a great job with the languages. I think French was his weakest (at least to me, but again, no expert). The Latin was spoken differently from how I learned it, but it's a dead language, so I assume there are several schools of pronunciation, and we can't really know for sure, so I'll overlook that. These are my positives. Now for the negative: Everything not directly spoken by the characters was delivered in a monotone, dry way, slow and without emphasis or inflection. It was very boring to listen too. And it's extra frustrating when paired with such good spoken lines, that you know that the narrator can deliver the lines believable, it's just that for some reason they made the decision to ... not do that? I don't understand that. Especially since most of the story is narration. I would definitely consider picking up this narrator again, though, if the problem persists, I will stop.

On to the book itself. This should have been 100% up my alley. This should have been something I loved. I was so excited by the premise of this book. And it was SO disappointing.
The characters were all flat, and had no dept.
Almost every single man was awful, with the exception of the rich widow. They treated woman horribly. Despite them being a scientific team, and procuring someone fluent in spoken Latin, which is rare, the men are happy she joined, because she is super useful, seeing as she's so pretty. Yup, they all are in favour of hiring her not because she's smart and has skills they can use, but because she has looks they can use. How is that not absolutely demeaning?
Then we have the older influential Nobel prize winner starting an affair with a younger team mate, and then when she (for valid reasons too) disagrees with the ethics of their project, he dumps her, and someone she because the villain of the team that everyone hates, because she... *checks note* thought it was unethical to send people/animals to the moment they will die. And thinks it's dangerous to bring someone from 2000 years in the past to the presents because of diseases.
How could she be so unreasonable as to think of illnesses as a doctor? The horror, thinking? As a woman? All they're there for is for looking pretty, right? And the man totally didn't use his status as Nobel price winner to entice her at all, no sir, that was all totally legit, no status abuse and weird power dynamics at all. He just happened to be many years her elder, more established in the world she wanted to get recognised in, and a Nobel price winner. So if she was a little starstruck, surely you can't blame him for taking advantage of that, and then dumping her a day? two days? later. of course not, it's all her fault, so everyone now hates her for being "difficult" and "sad because she saw her dead dog again and had to send him back to his death, which was hard for her" ugh how sentimental, to get sad of having to experience the death of your beloved dog again...
(If you hadn't noticed, I was being sarcastic. of course).
As for the woman in general, there was way more attention to how they looked at every given moment than to their actual scientific contributions. They were reduced to models to look pretty while the man did the talking. ... (Do I need to explain how awful I think that is?)

The plot is EXTREMELY slow. And weird. But let's start with slow. We get extensive introductions to every character of the scientific team, despite them all playing only a tiny part in the actual plot. I think we were about halfway through the book once things started happening.
Look, I love backstories on characters, but I need to care about who these people are and what they are doing before I care about that. You can't just be *backstory 1**backstory 2**backstory 3**backstory 4* without setting up any plot.

On to the weird. Okay, time travel. Sure. (slight spoilers for some of the events)(view spoiler) Everything after the timetravel bit makes little sense. It's all over the place. It's like the author was sure she wanted a romance between Caesar and Cassandra, and the only way she could think of making it happen was to put them together, alone, in a dangerous situation.

They had no chemistry. Or anything really. The romance was completely unrealistic, and made no sense at all. I think it was an attempt to do the whole enemy to lovers trope, but since this all takes place over 4 days, of which 2 Caesar refuses to even speak with her... Can you blame me I don't buy them falling in love so passionately they consider running away together? I'm not buying it.

If the misogyny wasn't horrible enough, there's a lot of subtle racism in this book. The first big one I noticed was when Cassandra is surprised Caesar smells good (after taking a bath... so that was weird), because "only Americans are concerned with how they smell." She also mentions in particular that the French smell badly, and how glad she was that Caesar wasn't as smelly as the French. This girl grew up speaking French and everything, but noooo, the French never washed themselves... This grated me enough to make me look up where perfume was invented, because I thought it might even be France. It wasn't, it was Hungary in 1370. Before America was even founded. Even before that in many Asian cultures they used incense to scent their clothing (and letters and everything else). In Ancient Egypt and Greece people also used fragrances. And of course people bathed. So, sorry to break it to you, Megan Edwards, but no, not everyone outside of America smells bad.
If not for this awful passage, I might have overlooked this other minor thing, but there's a passage about a Mrs, Khan, who was apparently horrible (we're never told why) and has a dog that was aggressive (to the point of killing a dog, yet not euthanized but okay...) and everyone is super glad when Cassandra hits the dog with a garbage bag and spills garbage all over Mrs. Khan. Who is the only person with a not English sounding name in the little flashback. Makes me wonder if Mrs. Khan wasn't disliked just because she wasn't American enough... I admit, this is only a little thing and could have been coincidence, but since we already know that author believes everyone outside of America smells... I wouldn't put it past her.
And then there's the horrible way they treat Caesar. The horrid "compliments" any foreigner living in Japan is very familiar with. People are surprised that Caesar, after three days in America, constantly surrounded by team members knows what a handshake is... You guys literally showed him that as soon as he arrived, do you think he's an idiot???? It's just insulting. And he learned how to say "Good Morning" and everyone acts like he's a total genius for being able to remember a single phrase. It's so condescending. It's like when I greet someone and they tell me my Japanese is amaaaazing, when I literally only said one word that someone who doesn't really know Japanese most likely also knows. It's not a compliment. It's saying wowwww, how amazing your tiny brain was able to remember a word from a language as complex as ours.
As my Japanese teacher once said: "if you're fluent in Japanese, people don't compliment you. If you make a mistake, suddenly they'll tell you you're good at Japanese. because just by saying something that's sorta Japanese, you've done better than they expected." It just means their expectations were that low, and no matter how you spin it, people being surprised you remember a single word is not a compliment.

Then there are the obvious plotholes, like needing to know the exact time and location of someone just before they die withing cms of precision, as if we know the exact place Caesar died. And the fact that somehow Gaius Julius Caesar just lost his name, and was only called by his Surnames even by his wife...
And the whole timetravel which was supposed to be the main point of this story managed to somehow add nothing to the story. Did we learn much about Caesar? No. Did it have any profound effect on him, or anyone else? No. (unless you count the two day romance that didn't feel romantic at all).

This book was sexist, xenophobic, filled with stereotypes, flat characters, and a plot without dept (can you even really call this a plot? It felt like ramblings and tangents, with no solid plot at all). The narrator shows promise, but overall fell flat. I really, really wanted to like this, but this was pretty awful.

What a unique twist on the time travel trope. Instead of going to Caesar these scientists and classicists being Caesar to them. But of course things don’t go as expected

The first half is the book is a lot of exposition but then things REALLY pick up. The second half Moves lightening fast and I loved the dynamic between Caesar and Cassandra. Caesars reaction to being plonked into the 20th century while surprising feels right. Of course this diplomat and conqueror would learn to acclimate fast and gain the higher ground on his “opponents”.

I genuinely enjoyed this one and would recommend especially to anyone interested in Roman history.

A Coin for the Ferryman is a thoroughly enjoyable read! Megan Edwards delivers an imaginative and engaging novel, full of unexpected twists and turns. Some adult topics, but without gratuitous sex and profanity.

A Coin for the Ferryman by Megan Edwards, narrated by Mark Ashby

Thank you to NetGalley and Imbrifex Books Audio for an ARC for my honest review.

I absolutely loved this time travel book! I found the characters were well-developed and quite interesting. Who wouldn’t want to ask questions of someone from the past. The first part was a bit slow while developing the characters and then the action really took off with the arrival of the first human time traveller.

A very enjoyable book!

#NetGalley #ACoinForTheFerryman

Normally I love historical novels and retellings and in-depth look into characters. Or people from history as characters. The first some reason this just fell very flat for me. There’s nothing technically wrong. The story works, there’s enough of a grasp of the time period at least to draw me in. But for some reason I just wasn’t that into it. It’s very minute for me well written, and well crafted, will narrated. but just not for me you know. As always like it and netGalley for sending me this review copy.

Written by Megan Edwards, this novel dares to answer “What would you ask Julius Ceasar if you could talk to him?” by bringing him to our time, right before he is murdered.

This is a long novel, but the narrator kept me engaged throughout the whole story. This is a long novel, for anyone who isn’t prepared, but it has a good pace and I think explores something that we have all been asked ‘what would you ask a person from history’?

And they do just that. Personally, I have no idea what kind of person Julius Ceasar was, but I think the author really captured what someone in his position could have been like. Someone who was always having to look to the future and make very big decisions and take others into consideration.

Overall, for a history nut, this was a really fun and interesting book. And I really like the premise of who/when/how/why they are able to do this form of time travel.

I 100% recommend this to anyone who is thinking of reading this book.

I have a lot of thoughts about this! This book was ultimately disappointing. I'm a big fan of time travel fiction, and was looking forward to an new addition to the genre, but this book felt clunky and in need of another edit or two before publication.

The pacing of this was all over the place. It started out incredibly slow, with a bunch of unnecessary backstory for pretty much every character, regardless of how prominent they ended up being in the second half. And there were a lot of characters. I was honestly surprised we didn't get a flashback to childhood chapter for Alex Hunt, or even for Jerome, the guy manning the door of the IDES lab. Once Caesar was brought into the future though, all of a sudden everything started happening very quickly, and yet there still managed to be long stretches that slowed everything down (Caesar's backstory about how he really got the scar on his arm; descriptions of pretty much every outfit anyone wears, things like that).

Despite the long descriptions trying to establish characters, the actual establishment of time travel and any debates around the ethics of it and how it might work were actually incredibly few and far between. We get a little bit of a description of how TESA works from Andrew, and Faith has lots of concerns about the safety of it all (which get waved away because she's a hysterical woman obviously), and Cassandra feels guilty sending Caesar back to die, but the time travel part of the story was ultimately incidental. I also absolutely do not believe that any scientist would attempt to bring a human being through the space/time continuum with only 2 successful tests completed beforehand! One coin from 6 months ago and a dog from 30 years ago are very different from a human man from over 2000 years ago! There should have been so many more tests gradually leading up to that kind of thing! But no one seems to question that of course it's fine with this incredibly minimal testing! Also the NDAs the IDES team signed were such a joke.

I was continuously surprised whenever I remembered that this was written by a women. The way that all of the female characters are portrayed (including Cassandra) were such caricatures of stereotypes. Faith was an angry harpy, Elizabeth was a doormat for her husband, Cassandra was so beautiful she was compared to a goddess constantly and everyone who met her immediately loved her. The disappointing thing was the Faith actually started out as a really compelling character, only for her breakup with Andrew (after an incredibly short relationship tbh) resulted in her doing a complete 180 and essentially disappearing from the main plot. I also kept getting Sonia and Simone confused. What was the purpose of having two eccentric old rich ladies with dead husbands, both with names that started with S, one of whom spoke Spanish and one of whom spoke French?

Alex Hunt existed to be a deus ex machina for the whole story. He literally existed to be rich and pay to get Cassandra out of whatever trouble she got into. Meeting him was definitely the catalyst for the whole story on Cassandra's part at least, but then he was also conveniently the solution to all of the issues that Hank Morgan created as well.

I also didn't understand the motivation for Hank to try to kidnap Caesar. Like obviously it was for the money, but what was he planning to do once he had him? How much money was he spending on hired goons to actually kidnap the man? What was the point? I was hoping that after we got the Hank backstory chapter, and then another chapter with him waiting in the safe-house for his guys to bring in Caesar, that we would get a little more information on what he was actually doing, but pretty much once Cassandra shakes the grey SUV Hank Morgan basically disappears. His shady business partner gets mentioned in passing, but we never actually meet him and he could have not existed and nothing would have changed.

The romance between Cassandra and Caesar felt out of place and tacked on. It was concerning that Cassandra felt like she had to sleep with him because she was supposed to be his hostess and she felt like it was the only way to distract him from stealing cutlery and scheming to escape?? Like, girl, he was literally sleeping when you crawled into his bed the first time. He would have been fine until morning. You could have easily gotten through two more days of keeping him entertained without having sex with him! And honestly, she basically did... Alex Hunt comes in the next day and they kept Caesar entertained together and threw a party for him, and then the following day they flew back to Pasadena. So like, there was no need for her to sleep with him and no need for her to continuously beat herself up about actually becoming an escort even after Alex "saved" her from that life! Also the fact that she ended up pregnant at the end is wild, like she really risked 2000 year old STDs because she thought she had to have sex with him and didn't bother with protection.

As far as the audiobook goes, I did not like the narrator. Apologies to Mark Ashby, but his voice was very robotic and lacked any intonation to make the story come to life. He did do a decent job changing his voice to differentiate characters, but literally all of the prose between dialogue was irritating to listen to. I'm also curious as to why they chose a male narrator, when the story is very much Cassandra's. There are male points of view at various points, but Cassandra is the main character and is the one who apparently wrote the book, so why not a female narrator?

I feel like I'm criticizing this a lot. It was not a bad book. There were a lot of character and plot choices that I didn't agree with, but I think the core story in this book was a good one. I just wish that it had been executed differently.

In the book a coin for the ferryman, Cassandra lives with her mother in a rundown trailer on the outskirts of Las Vegas Nevada. Since the age of 14 she has learned Latin from one of the best teachers in the business. Her dream is to go to college and study all the dead languages and thanks to her very first escort date, she can! This is how she finds herself being asked to join A very special project. It is a team of scientists, linguistic professors and technicians who want to bring Julius Ceaser for a brief visit to the future. I thought this book was going to be awesome, but found it wordy and waited down with needless details. I thought the ending was awesome and we’re so glad I continue to listen to the audiobook, but thought it could’ve gotten there a bit better. Not to mention so many things in the book were so coincidental. Having said that if you like time travel in the aspects of time travel, drama and lengthy descriptions you’re probably love this book. I’ve read reviews where people do and I can see how they do I just don’t like wordy text. I received this book from Net Galley and I am leaving the review voluntarily. Please forgive any mistakes in my review I am blind and dictate most of it, but all opinions are my own.

This book had so so much potential, full wonders could have been done with it. Could have. The book, the characters, the plot, everything just falls flat. The first portion of the book was very very slow-paced and I found myself rather reading other books than just finishing a chapter in this one. After (SPOILERS!!) Ceasar came to this time zone everything was just...how do I say this...not really well written and sloppy. Overall I didn't like this book, didn't root for any character and just wouldnt reccomend it to anyone really. It's way too long and slow-paced to be enjoyed.

A Coin For The Ferryman by Megan Edwards is a wild out there time travel story that involves an archeological dig, Latin translator, Roman Emperor, and Las Vegas chips.

The one rule of time traveling is don't change history but when Julius Caesar is involved all bets are off.

I thoroughly enjoyed this action packed very clever story brought to life by narrator Mark Ashby. Pay careful attention to the first chapter because it comes full circle at the end and always Beware The Ides of March

I received a free copy of this audiobook from the publisher via #NetGalley for a fair and honest review. All opinions are my own.

This started off so well, unfortunately, the further along I got, the lower my opinion of it plummeted. The book started full of colourful Coen brother vibes and hilarious quips. There were a lot of tangents where various characters’ backstory was explored but they were entertaining and enjoyable. Unfortunately, as the story progressed, I found myself repeatedly looking up the author as I could not believe the author was a woman; the writing was just too ‘male gaze’-esque. Whilst I was aware of the fact that the story was set in the 90s and a young woman in academia would be having a tough time, it was odd that the writer herself took such a cringy off-putting tone herself. She was constantly skirting the line between some attempt at social realism and nauseating perviness. Otherwise, I generally enjoyed the story more for the characters rather than the plot itself, although it did admittedly have a satisfying ending. The science of time travel could have been better explored as well as the “romance” that came out of left field towards the end. Overall, it was engaging all be it a missed opportunity given the intriguing premise!

ps. I listened to this on audio, and the narrator Mark Ashby was very good, especially his mastery of all the accents and voices.

*** I received an early complimentary copy of this book. The opinions expressed in this review are completely my own

I absolutely loved this book. I enjoyed the narration, the story, the things I learned and the ending. Cannot stop talking about it to everyone.

Okay. Hear me out...

Time travel? Kidnapping Julius Caesar? Taking him to Vegas?

Look, if you were interested in fairly accurate, nuanced historical fiction, you're in the wrong place. In fact, if you are looking for a well written, character driven portrayal of arguably one of the most famous characters of ancient history... again, you'll want to move along.

But. If you are anong those rare, privledged few whose suspension of believe and ability to wade thru odd plot changes and unnecessary sequences of action scenes evocative of 50's westerns... you, my friend, have arrived. Welcome.

In all seriousness, I think Edwards made the right choice in not sticking closely to actual history. This is purely an adventure/love story á la Bill & Ted, without the cheesy humor.

I actually listened to this in audiobook form. Perso ally, if it sounds interesting, you should just pick up a copy. The reader is sadly utilitarian, with no real feeling placed, and odd pronunciations that took me out of the story.

My thanks to Net Galley for a free copy of the audiobook in exchange for an honest review.