Sol Invictus is a sequel to Ben Gartner’s The Eye of Ra adventure series. But if you have not read The Eye of Ra yet, Sol Invictus, on its own can be read as a stand-alone book.
Having reaped multi awards for his first book, Ben Gartner continues to delight his readers with John and Sarah’s new adventures in his second book, Sol Invictus.
The adventure continues from Egypt in the Eye of Ra to the gladiator days of ancient Rome in Sol Invictus. The plot is not all too complicated. Readers can already gain an insight of where the siblings’ next adventure would be. The first chapters slowly unravel with the family’s conversation about Roman gladiators and plans to visit an ancient Roman frontier exhibit in the National History Museum in DC. Additionally, the author gives a glimpse of the story’s conflict with Sarah’s show of attitude towards her parents and aloofness towards her brother, John. Something John had noticed since returning from their last adventure. The sudden appearance of Aten and his message for them gives out their mission in this quest. “You must unite Constantius and Crocus…you must travel through time and space again…it is the only way…” From here, John and Sarah’s time-travel adventure begins.
Finding themselves in ‘the time of the ancient Roman Empire,’ battling in the legendary Roman arena with the gladiators, seeing Constantius in the arena, coming face to face with Crocus, and hiding from the Roman legionaries set the pace of the adventure. The level of excitement heightens with every turn of events in the story and consequently intensifies the interest of readers to continue turning the pages to see what happens next. The main characters, John and Sarah blend in with the lives, the struggles and the conflicts of the other characters in the story. Ben Gartner has splendidly interweaved the characters and the story together such that as the storyline nears the end, there was effortless resolution of conflicts among the characters. Sarah was able to come to terms with her personal identity and the need for freedom after having known Aurora who share the same situation.
Just because I happened to be born to a certain family at a certain time and place, I don’t think that makes me anymore special than you or John. Or anyone. We should all be treated as a piece of the whole. The mountain is the less without every rock…The forest is the less without every tree.
John, on the other hand was able to meet with Constantius and got to know his plans, ” Restorer of the eternal light, John. That is what I aim to be…I believe that if we join with the Alemanni, together we can defeat our common enemy and restore light to the people.” As the siblings were caught in the midst of an ongoing battle John only ‘had to find Sarah, unite Constantius and Crocus, then get Sarah to the arena to teleport them back home.’
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