• Grade: 6

It's A.D. 79 on the slopes of Vesuvius. With no warning the mountain has erupted into violent, terrifying life. Those who can, flee, but one old man, Lucius Quintus Claudianus, sits in an abandoned villa in Herculaneum, struggling to write down a story only he can tell. Seventy years before, Lucius was the sole survivor of three Roman legions, ambushed and slaughtered in the wilds of Germania.
Lucius's tale is of dark forests, evil swamps and horrific pagan sacrifices, but it is also the story of his friendship with Freya, a Cherusci warrior. As soldiers caught up in treachery and war, they must choose between their culture and their friendship. And it's a choice they have to get right, because the consequences of being wrong could mean death.

John Wilson was born in 1951 in Edinburgh, Scotland. He did his early growing up on the Island of Skye and in Paisley, near Glasgow. From 1969 to 1974, he attended the University of St. Andrews where he took an Honours B.Sc.. in Geology and never played golf once. He took a position with the Geological Survey of Rhodesia (Zimbabwe). In his two years there, he mapped rocks, dodged land mines and watched the country sink ever deeper into civil war. Shortly before he was due to be called into the army, John retreated back to Britain on his way to the safety of Canada. He settled on Calgary where geology was booming and the only danger was freezing to death in January. In 1979, he moved to Edmonton to take up a post with the Alberta Geological Survey. In 1988 he sold a feature article to the Globe and Mail. This fueled a smouldering mid-life crisis and he took up freelance writing full-time. With some success, John mined the experiences of his travels for articles, journalism and photo essays. He even began to express himself poetically and, with a young family, began writing children's stories. He moved to Nanaimo and then Lantzville on Vancouver Island. John has been widely published by a number of Canadian presses, with his acolades including a shortlisting for the Governor General’s Award.

John Wilson's profile page

Germania