Harris Provides an awe-inspiring tour of one of the monumental engineering triumpths on which the Roman empire was based... What makes this nove all but putdownable... is the bravura fictional flair that crackles through it. brilliantly evoking the doomed society pursuing its ambitions and schemes in the shadow of a mountain that nobody knew was a volcano. Harris, as Vesuvirus explodes, gives full vent to his genius for thrilling narrative. fast-paced twists and turns alternate with nightmarish slow-motion scenes (desperate figures struggling to wade thigh-deep through slurries of pumice towards what they hope will be safety). Harris's unleashing of the furnace ferocities of the eruptions terminal phase turns his books closing sequences into pulse-rate speeding masterpieces of suffocating suspense and searing action.