Usurper: A Novel of the Fall of Rome

It is the turn of the fifth century. Rome is bigger than ever, but only a shadow of what it once was. Two indolent youths hold the Throne of the Caesars. Sensing weakness and opportunity, a swarm of barbarians pour across the frozen Rhine. At the edge of the empire, Roman Britain grows desperate from a crumbling economy and Saxon raids; and begins to contemplate taking fate into her own hands. In the chaos, a general arises who has the ambition to restore peace and stability to the empire, a man whose name is laden with destiny: Constantine III.

Severus is a proud young soldier of Rome’s Sixth Legion; but when he defies orders so that others might be saved, he finds himself disgraced and facing military justice. Constantine sees something else in Severus and offers him a place in the elite Schola – the general’s personal body guard. But Severus does not know that this new role will bring him from the icy moors of Britannia to the blue Mediterranean of Hispania and Gaul; from the foothills of the Alps to the passes of the Pyrenees. For the man he has sworn to protect will become a usurper. He will become both the hope and the doom of the mighty Roman Empire.

Meticulously researched, but not afraid to challenge convention, Usurper re-imagines one of the major causes of the fall of the Western Roman Empire. It tells the widely unknown story of ancient Britain’s attempt to save Rome, and the heroic struggles of forgotten men who risked all to prevent the cataclysm that changed the world forever.