The first half of this book before the eruption starts is honestly incredibly boring in the most delightful way for me. I love Marcus Attilius and his single-minded devotion to such a mundane and yet incredibly important source of Rome's greatness: the aqueduct. Almost all of the story here is introducing characters to breathe life into the world of 79AD Pompeii and I really think Harris succeeded in writing a nice glimpse into that time period.

Marcus is an engineer in charge of a branch of the Augusta branch of the Italian Aqueduct. The way he treats his job with such reverence and importance is really refreshing. Nobody thinks about the amount of effort, planning and upkeep time it takes to make water appear from dozens if not hundreds of miles away. I really identified with Attilius and his job as it felt like he was describing the modern electrical grid, which I work on today.

I could have done without the love plot, but as it unfolded I understood why it was included. Without it there was no real reason that Attilius would have stuck around to be part of the disaster. It gave him a goal, albeit a pretty shallow one. The rest of the side characters felt like real people with hopes and dreams. The way we get to see how almost all of them faired through the worst Vesuvius had to offer was fun and makes for a very tight story.