The Avenger (Casca The Eternal Mercenary) | Tony Roberts

The Avenger (Casca The Eternal Mercenary) | Tony Roberts | Fine tale of war and glory

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The Avenger (Casca...

	The Avenger (Casca The Eternal Mercenary) Tony Roberts Americana Books, 2008 average customer review:based on 5 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Tony Roberts latest book in Barry Sadler's Casca The Eternal Mercenary Series. Casca returns to Constantinople seeking revenge on the Brotherhood of the Lamb for the deaths of his woman and child.

CASCA - what else !

This Adventure of CASCA is worthwhile to buy it gets you hooked. After you read it you want to read the other CASCA Books which are presently out of print, but you can get them, its not impossible and hopefully somebody will finally reprint all other CASCA Books.

If you know CASCA you will enjoy this one, if not it will start you to want to read more.
I hope Tony Roberts will continue to write more of CASCA Adventures .

Every CASCA Book Tony Roberts wrote, became better and better.
"The Avenger" is very (very) close to the originals Barry Sadler wrote.
History, Adventure, Battles, and more are in Line with the 22 Books Barry Sadler wrote.

Tony combined the different story lines well. He added hints of other Books (The WarLord, the Persian, the Barbarian and more)

In the Mid-Eighties I read all of Barry Sadler Books while I served all over. With Barry Sadler departure (shot in South America) I stopped reading them. Then Paul Dengelegi continued the Series but sadly to say they were not well written.

Now Tony Roberts continues the Series and I am happy that he has found the Guts to continue these difficult and truly hard to write Adventures of CASCA.

Tony excellent Job, continue to write and do not let others stop your quest, its just jealousy because they can` t write themselves.

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Fine tale of war and glory

Having recently been pointed in the direction of this series - which I've never heard of until recently - I was recommended this story to read. I've just completed it and found it an enjoyable experience. The plot and sub-plots race along nicely and I certainly enjoyed the in depth characterisation, which is more than one would expect from a book in this genre, such as the Gor series by John Norman.

Being set in Byzantium, a name that conjures up the mystic east, was also very interesting and the highlight was to me the charioteer racing. The author made me feel part of the racing action, something many books fail to do when any action scene is present. In addition the historical settings would appear to be accurate which points to a lot of research done before the story was written.

I won't repeat the long and painstaking process of writing about the storyline as it has already been done by other reviewers here but I concur it's worth a 5-star review.

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Welcome return to the old style of Casca

This was more like the really old Cascas. I mean the first few in the series Barry Sadler wrote all those years back. Gone are the modern less exciting covers and we have a return to the better traditional style covers, although there's still room for improvement, but at least things are going in the right direction. The story too is a bit more like the old tales I liked when I was younger and maybe someone's had a word with the writer after the more modern settings we've recently had. This series has been crying out for something like this period.

For those who have read the older books, this picks up after the end of Casca The sentinel (#9) and sees our hero on the rampage in Byzantium taking on the Brotherhood in their home town. He's up against it and help comes from his old friend Sicarus (remember him?). But even that can't help Casca get at the top dogs so Casca finds a way to catch the attention of the emperor and empress by becoming a charioteer. Neat. This is like mixing Ben Hur into Casca and it works. He turns into something like a movie star with his fame and he gets access to the palace where the Brotherhood has their big guys and he starts knocking off the elders one by one.

I like the fact he's not in charge and the relationship is run by the empress (what a woman!). Makes it more edgy. Of course, Casca has another woman outside the palace. Another thing I like about this story is that things don't go right all the time like you get in some books which is boring. So poor Casca is sent to Italy to fight in the war with the Goths and ends up a prisoner. He's rescued by Sicarus and when he gets back finds his woman has been taken by another man. Echoes of real life for some soldiers today. That's what a good Casca tale should have, something we can understand and maybe have experienced ourselves. Makes it more believeable (sp?).

The tale continues into Persia and another war. Casca is in charge of some no-hope suicide unit full of rebellious Goths and he has to lick them into shape before they face the enemy. Finally the plague breaks out (again?) in the big city and Casca returns to find his arch-enemy threatening to reveal him to the palace unless he does as he's told. Casca takes another path and rescues a little girl and brings her up away from his enemy's eyes.

The story then moves away from the revenge path and ends up with Casca being more interested in the girl's welfare which I think the writer wants us to understand is the cause of him calming down and no longer interested in killing the Brotherhood guys - who seem to have left the city. When she grows up he leaves and joins the army to fight one big battle at the end.

This is more like the old tales in this series and I would recommend it to old fans and new ones alike. If you like a good tale of intrigue and war, then this is it. Excitement, sexy girls, nasty schemers. This has it all. Please, more like this, Mr Roberts.

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Return to the Casca stories of old

When I was much younger - and had hair - I chanced across a series of adventure books called Casca. Those first few books hooked me and I have ever since bought each new book that has come out. Some were good, some average and some downright bad.

I'm pleased to see that for once the writer has gone back far in time to the days of the Dark Ages and we pick up Casca's story on the back of a novel written by Barry Sadler back in 1983. These are the sort of things that give this series flavor. So much for modern settings, we know about these and our grandparents told us what it was like. I prefer older settings and this was no disappointment.

There was a series of action scenes involving charioteer racing - like in Ben Hur - and this for me will probably remain the strongest impression of this story. We also got a glimpse of the pathos of Casca when he realizes he won't keep a woman and yet again we are gently reminded through the words of this novel that immortality is a curse, not a blessing.

I'm pleased to see most of the grammatical errors that plagued the first book or two of this writer have gone and I only spotted one this time round. Also thankfully we have a cover much in the style of the old Casca series and not the boring, flat covers of 25-27 that wouldn't encourage anyone to pick the book up.

One complaint. The amazon photo of the book is in black and white. Why is this? The color of the actual book is much more attractive and I would have thought the seller would want the best photo to encourage sales.

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Casca Combats Constantinople

I highly recommend this book of Casca and his adventures during the time of one of the Byzantine emperors ruling from Constantinople in the sixth century. Casca is a Roman soldier who is cursed by Christ to live an immortal life as a soldier throughout time. I'll leave the story's plot description to the first reviewer below, who summarizes it nicely. I completely agree with the two reviewers below that the additions of several chariot-racing scenes were very exciting and convey the impression of actually being in the chariot with Casca, crashing around the corners and speeding down the straight-aways. This is especially interesting because in the first Casca book, which occurs about 500 years before, Casca wants nothing at all to do with chariots. In fact, in this book he has a rough time learning to even control a chariot, let alone race a four-horse chariot later on.

This book also contains Casca's small personal fights (sword and otherwise) all the way up to his involvment in large-scale battles against Persians in the East and Goths in the West, with revenge against the Brotherhood cult mixed in. These scenes are written in an exciting and descriptive style that brought me into the story's time and place and made me feel like I was personally witnessing, and sometimes taking part in, the action. And the descriptions of various settings throughout the story were also very well done; I could visualize the exotic grandeur of the palace to the carnage of pitched battles. This is what a Casca book is all about.

The one suggestion for an improvement for me would be to eliminate the parts of the story and history that Casca is not directly affected by, had not witnessed, or was not told of directly. Events and historical side descriptions of what rulers and other characters are doing but that Casca is not involved with tend to slow down the faster pacing of the story. Basically, less story and history of others and more Casca action and adventure.

Personally, I enjoy only the Casca books that occur in sword-based eras. So this was a much-appreciated book for me, as this is the first sword-era book from the author, Tony Roberts, the inheritor of the mantle of the series creator, Barry Sadler. And I'm looking forward to more of this kind of exciting sword-era action and adventure from him in the, hopefully, near future.

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