It's been ages since I heard of the movie The Last Legion, and the history buff in me was fascinated by the screenshots. And the fact that the movie stars Aishwarya Rai in the role of the fighter Livia, and that she stars in the movie with Ben Kingsley, had nothing to with it. But after that, there was no news of the movie for a long time and I started to think that I would never see it. So it was but natural that when I came across the book, I grabbed it at once.
And I did not regret the choice. The book was my introduction to the great historical fiction writer, Valerio Massimo Manfredi. But more than that, The Last Legion is the story of legends.
The days of the mighty Legions are just a memory. Barbarians are knocking on the walls of once-majestic Rome. The last legion, Legio Nova Invicta, trained in secrecy to protect the last emperor, is routed by the overwhelming barbarian forces. When the legionary tasked with getting help reaches the emperor's villa, he finds everybody within massacred and the emperor captured by the barbarians with his mother and his tutor. The emperor's father tasks the soldier with protecting the child emperor with his last breath.
His first attempt fails miserably, with the child emperor's mother getting killed and the soldier getting apparently mortally wounded. Nursed back to health by his attractive rescuer, he frees his colleagues from the legion. And goes for another attempt. After narrowly escaping from the prison with the child emperor and his tutor, the band continues across Europe, while being hunted by the barbarian king's right-hand man, heading towards British islands. The child's tutor is a druid, who is convinced that the legion of the tartan is still alive there.
They reach the British shores a step ahead of their hunters, and find the legion of the Dragon disbanded. While the barbarians following them collaborate with the Saxon king, the druid tries to gather the survivors of the legion together against the conquerors.
Aurelius, who is a soldier tormented by his forgotten past (he has lost his memory, but the flashes he gets and the events lead him to believe he has a dark past), is a loyal and brave man. He continues to remain lonely, haunted by his history. He is loyal to his fellow soldiers, and is ready to risk his life to save them or his Emperor, and is convinced that the child will be safe in Gaul, or in fact, away from Rome.
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Article comments
1 - Disappointed
No need to read the book after the whole plot has been described in thsi review