Resumo de The Centurion's Empire

Combining the unique elements of time-travel and historical description, The Centurion's Empire is an interesting read. The story begins in the first century A.D. with Vitellan, a young man with a unique gift of withstanding extreme cold temperatures. Vitellan, a soldier in the Roman army, is placed in a special regiment in order to be scutinized by the Temporians, ancient Etruscans who have found a formula that woks similar to anitfreeze in order to travel through the passing years, without knowing that he is being watched. But, due to the lack of security by the Temporians, two thieves break into their secret castle and steal not only some of the potion but also the instructions for reviving the frozen person. The Teporians quickly shut themselves off from the world forgetting about Vitellan who finally ends up in Britain. Meanwhile, the theif who escaped gives his stolen items to a physician who also is a chemist. This man goes to Britain and meets Vitellan. Because of his own problems, Vitellan volunteers to be frozen by the physician to travel through time. As the novel continues, Vitellan wakes up into many different time periods including the Hundred Years' War and the mid-twenty-first century. Throughout all of these times, he struggles to survive to make the next leap.
In this novel, Sean McMullen has done an excellent job with his descriptions and the believability of the novel. The fight scenes contain enough suspense to keep the reader questioning, and they contain an equal amount of description to add to the realism. Although the idea of freezing people for time travel seems silly, the author has combined the right amount of science fiction with believable fiction. Though the author wrote the machanics of the story well, the continuity of the plot is very weak. For instance, there is never really one adversary that Vitellan is fighting against. He opposes different adversarys in each time period for the most part. Secondly, while the book is about time travel, roughly half the book takes place in the near future setting, as opposed to the other half dealling with four totally different time periods. Finally, the editor of the novel did a poor job because there are many mistakes of labelling the wrong speaker. Overall, the story was a creative idea that with more work could have been a great deal better.

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