Two Pompeiis

[alaterdate]

In June I read two different books involving the city Pompeii. The first was New Pompeii by Daniel Godfrey and the second was Pompeii by Robert Harris.

New Pompeii is a sci-fi adventure where the main character gets involved with a powerful company that invented time travel. Instead of using time travel to send someone back in time (or to the future which is impossible imo) they use this technology to bring people from the past into the present time. The caveat the company had been having with the technology was that they couldn't bring someone from more than 30 years in the past forward. Well, based on the title you might be able to surmise that they get over that hurdle. That's right! They bring the people from Pompeii into the present. As part of being ethical they had only been bringing people who died in the past into the present. The first time they did it was with a plane crash that happened exactly 30 years ago and all the people who died were now alive 30 years in the present and they couldn't handle having missed 30 years of their family's life etc. and most of them committed suicide. So their brilliant plan with the Pompeiians? Recreate the city of Pompeii and put them in it and act like it was still CE 79. And then, get this, they claimed they wanted to make this place a theme park. Lmfao.
Anyway, so the main character is a scholar and Ancient Rome his specialty. He ends up in a convoluted way getting involved with this company and they hire him to go to their new Pompeii and tell them if anything is wrong with it. (As if he could really know lmao.) He goes and lives in this New Pompeii and alllllll the Pompeiians are super suspicious of the company people who "convinced" them that they were sent there by Augustus (dead at the time and yes a god, but c'mon) who saved them all from the volcano's eruption. Yeah. Anyway, the best part of this book was that the Pompeiians were absolutely not fooled by all this. They even uncovered the company's secret area where they kept the helicopters that they used to fly to and from the site. And they were not scared or stumped by the technology the MC eventually introduced to them (TVs, Security cameras, and Ipads). It was great. And really only that bit was great. I loved that the author recognized that people in the past are the same as people now. And even if it was beyond them to really grasp the way the technology worked they just shrugged and were like ok magic is real after all.
The writing in this book is fine. The plot is not great. Even disbarring all the time travel hijinks the plot is convoluted and the twists aren't compelling. Neither are the characters. I had no care at all for what happened to anyone. It was just mildly amusing to read the about the Pompeiians besting these people. There is a sequel too where New Pompeii becomes known to the rest of the world and with the slavery and infanticide I can only imagine the mess that becomes. I have no desire to read the sequel, this book itself was too ridiculous for me.

People (somehow) positively compare New Pompeii with Michael Crichton's Timeline. Do not believe them. Timeline is unfathomably better than this book. Timeline is one of my favorite books of all time. Please, read Timeline (at least give it a shot, I know the beginning can be quite boring until they actually time travel).

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Harris' Pompeii takes place in the real Pompeii in CE 79. Yes, the volcano is about kill everyone in late August. The book starts two days before the eruption. The ticking time bomb is in the background for the entire novel and of course as it nears closer and closer to the day it ramps up the tension. The story follows an Aquarius (the job not the star sign lol) as he is sent to oversee the aqueduct line Aqua Augusta. Things quickly go down hill for Marcus Attilius Primus our dear Aquarius. He gets entangled into a kind of mafia plot where the guy who illicitly runs the town wants him dead because he won't take his bribes like everyone else.
Attilius is obsessed with aqueducts. He descends from a line of competent aquariuses and had been taught his entire life how to work on aqueducts and how to spot water in the earth. The line busts and he has to climb up the mountain/volcano with some workers to repair it. He gets it done even though he almost dies doing it. Even though the day he fixes it is the day Vesuvius starts erupting....
While I enjoyed the book and I really liked the ending it didn't actually get interesting until page 148 out of 274. Over halfway through it lmao. Honestly, I only picked up this book because it was about Rome... it even sounded boring to me, but I was standing in the store with my Christmas money in my hand going "hurrgh Rome" and so I bought it lmao.
Don't get me wrong though, the writing was strong and something to enjoy even in the boring parts and I did love the characters. There were also some character/plot things in it that surprised me. I made a lot of notes in this book.

"She saw a town—our town—many years from now. A thousand years distant maybe more." He let his voice fall to a whisper. "She saw a city famed throughout the world. Our temples, our amphitheater, our streets—thronging with people of every tongue. That was what she saw in the guts of the snakes. Long after the Caesars are dust and the empire has passed away, what we have built here will endure." —Pompeii, Harris