I finished Hostis and am losing my mind right now. I want to eat these two and also chuck them off the roof that’s how delighted I am. I am so happy I cannot decide how to express when there are so many options so I am physically frozen with how much energy I want to expend.
It says the end of book one, does that mean there will be a second? If there is I will die from joy, if there is not I am still dying of joy. I want to commit loving non physical cannibalism onto Hannibal and Scipio I cannot describe how lovely this book was.
Talking about books! Do you have any historical fiction books you’d recommend? Or any books at all? (Besides your other books which I’ll definitely check out) Hostis kind of broke the reading slump I was in and maybe it’s the giddiness of finishing a book at 3 am but I now want to read a LOT of books. Especially historical fiction.
Thank you, I'm delighted that you enjoyed <3
There's not going to be a sequel, alas (and I should probably fix that the ebook still says "book one" because it gets people's hopes up all the time). But I have written thousands of words of post-canon scenes back when I was still planning a second book—which would have been called Inimicus—that I might just post as a Punic Wars fic on AO3 someday!
As for historical fiction! Oh boy, get ready.
Any of Mary Renault's Ancient Greece novels. My personal favourite is The Last of the Wine, but her Alexander trilogy is fun too.
Dorothy Dunnett's Lymond Chronicles. They're set in the Renaissance era and are, uh, not for the faint of heart, but they're extremely rewarding if you don't mind Googling obscure references every five minutes and also wanting to fistfight the protagonist.
Colleen McCullough's The First Man in Rome for more Roman Republic-era fiction (it's the first part of her Masters of Rome series, but I haven't read the rest). Dense and meandering but well researched and at times dryly funny.
And of course, if you can't get enough of the Punic Wars, I'd always suggest giving Livy 21-30 a whirl. Livy is much livelier and more accessible than other primary sources (looking at you, Polybius), even if you shouldn't believe everything he says, and despite obviously being a Roman historian he does not hide his Hannibal boner very well. I have the J. C. Yardley translation with footnotes by Dexter Hoyos.
I hope you find something you enjoy! :D
