Lady of the Eternal City

Empress of Rome, Book 4

By: Kate Quinn

Narrated by: Elizabeth Wiley

Length: 20 hrs and 29 mins

Publisher's Summary

Elegant, secretive Sabina may be empress of Rome, but she still stands poised on a knife's edge. She must keep the peace between two deadly enemies: her husband, Hadrian, Rome's brilliant and sinister emperor; and battered warrior Vix, who is her first love. But Sabina is guardian of a deadly secret: Vix's beautiful son, Antinous, has become the emperor's latest obsession.

As tragedy sends Hadrian spiraling into madness, Vix and Sabina form a last desperate pact to save the empire. But ultimately the fate of Rome lies with an untried girl, a spirited redhead who may just be the next Lady of the Eternal City....

©2015 Kate Quinn (P)2015 Tantor

Critic Reviews

"This is a feast for historical readers." ( RT Book Reviews)

Fantastic plot, not so great performance

The storyline of this book is great, especially towards the end: gripping! However, about half the book is from a male perspective. I think that they should have had a male narrate that portion since it was such an extensive portion of the book and the female narrator did not do a great job impersonating male characters. Also, the female characters in this book are strong and regal. The narrator made them sound ditzy. My opinion is to read the book rather than listen as the audible does not do it justice.

Thoroughly Enjoyable

I usually listen to my audible books as I fall asleep but this was so interesting that I found it difficult to go to sleep to and often extended the timer.

Too Long. Dragged

Long complicated story. Actual history interesting but trying to weave multiple characters into years of Roman history and all their stories back and forth sometimes got confusing Characters like Vix seemed muddled. Hero? OK tough soldier but unable to manage personal relations. Just does what he's told. Limited conscience. Was indifferent to most characters. For me, the only interesting one was Haradian with all mental/emotional issues. I'm a history buff and just reading history books about him is more interesting than this book.

A Jump the Shark conclusion to the series

I read this series and enjoyed the peek into that historical era. However, this book had its Jump the Shark moment with the affair of the emperor and Vix's adopted son and they lost me after that. Even so, I did finish this even though the last half of the book mostly dragged and I couldn't wait for it to be done. The entire series suffers from absolutely terrible narrators, especially with children's voices. The children's voices are incredibly annoying.

Ugh!

I couldn’t finish it! I normally love Kate Quinn novels. The story was okay but the narration insipid!

An experience

I was unsure about this book prior to the start but this was quite an adventure through history. Loved it

Off the rails

Author was obsessed with homosexuality and I bailed in chapter 7 when Vix som made out with the male emperor

incredible

What a story . Excellent narration as well
I was cleaning my house and the last few hours were so captivating that u scrubbed all the baseboards as well