FAUSTINA MANCUNIENSIS
A NOVEL OF ROMAN BRITAIN
by
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Light and darkness fought a seemingly never-ending battle inside Faustina's head; at various times she sensed the terror of being utterly alone, while at others she was dimly aware of figures looming over her. She thought that she recognized some of them, though others were unknown; others still seemed like demons and monsters from the very depths of Tartarus. She would try to speak to these figures from the shadows but would find herself unable to; often the darkness would come as a blessed relief to her mental torment. She began to catch brief, semi-coherent images of a large but bare room that she didn't recognise, before they would dissolve once more into a gray fug of oblivion. Often she would sense the figures talking over her, rather than to her, as she lay; all she wanted to do was scream in terror, but the noise didn't always banish the images. Strange, foul smells would assault her nostrils from time to time. On a couple of occasions she felt the sensation of drowning, which was something that she'd always found especially frightening. She tried to fight the ghastly visages that were doing nameless horrors to her, and on one occasion she thought that she could see the mother that she'd never known - the poor woman had died giving birth to Faustina – smiling at her reassuringly and handing her sword.
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About the Book
“The stupid smirk died instantly on his lips, and all the colour drained from his face; his jaw dropped and his eyes grew wide with terror, as if seeing a ghost -- which, in a real sense, he was” It’s 153 A.D., and with the often-brutal Conquest now a distant memory, the Roman province of Britannia is peaceful and prosperous. Faustina, a young artist from the town of Mancunium, with a talent for mosaics even more impressive than her flowing blonde hair, travels to another city to execute her latest commission for a wealthy gentleman client -- only to fall victim on the way to a savage assault. Faustina barely survives the assault and has appalling injuries to both body and mind. She will need every bit of her formidable strength of will and warrior spirit to battle her way back to health and discover the perpetrator of the ghastlyt evil done to her. However, all too soon she is once more in fear of her life! In this gripping tale of a young girl’s struggle against near-impossible odds, what begins as an apparently straightforward quest for justice leads into some of the darkest corners of the second-century underworld. Caught up in a terrifying web of fraud, deceit, bribery, corruption and bloody murder, how can she possibly hope to prevail against an all powerful criminal mastermind who has a whole city in his evil thrall?
About the Author
I'm in my mid-fifties, married with three stepchildren and five step grandchildren. Born in Edinburgh, at the age of eight I moved to the Manchester area, where I've spent most of my life since. For many years I've dreamed of writing novels, but nine years ago I was fortunate enough to marry a lovely lady who has since given me every possible encouragement and assistance in the practicalities of putting pen to paper; there is little doubt that without her great help I would still just be dreaming. Faustina Mancuniensis is my first full length novel; I set it in a time that I've always been most interested in, the classical Paradoxically I'm also keenly interested in the future, and my next book will be set in a time far ahead of the present. I don't intend to adhere to any one genre of novel-writing, for I would prefer not to be typecast but to simply let my imagination roam wherever it will - and hope that I have the ability to be able to translate its musings into tales that appeal equally well to readers with many different interests.