Gemini by Anthony Tye Rodrigues

Description

Licinianus is a reluctant soldier in a very unusual family, one whose ancient gods give special powers to twins.  His father, a twin himself, earned the gratitude of an Emperor and gained for Licinianus an honor that he does not want:  appointment as a tribune in the army. Against his will, Licianius becomes a Roman officer and watches ineffectually while the army in Britannia, depleted by civil war, collapses before the onslaught of the Northern tribes. Only the arrival of the army of the Emperor Constantius saves the province, as Licinianus, receiving the gift of his family’s gods, becomes an almost legendary fighter.

Meanwhile, a strange new religion, Christianity, is permeating the Romano-British world, plunging Licinianus and his twin sister Severiana into yet more conflict. Christianity denies the very gods that give the family its strength, outraging their beliefs and customs. Nevertheless, it casts its spell on the twins’ brother and Severiana’s husband, threatening to tear the family apart.

When Constantius dies, the specter of civil war rises yet again.  But worse is to come:  when an outrage by the Emperor’s son is condoned by his Christian mother, Licinianus and his family determine to take their revenge. They join forces with a shadowy organization whose aim is to break Britain free of the Empire to save itself from the chaos of a failing Rome. But to restore Britannia and the family honor, they must undertake the impossible: they must kill the new Emperor.

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Gemini is the second book of a trilogy, The Villa at Oak River, which offers a fictional history of Lullingstone Villa in Kent, where the burial of a young man and woman under the floor of a pagan temple constitutes an archaeological mystery to this day.

About the Author

The author grew up in Cape Town, South Africa, the son of a Portuguese father and a South African mother. He never graduated high school, and, after serving in the army and holding a number of not-very-interesting jobs, decided to immigrate to Australia, where he finally calmed his mother’s anxiety by matriculating and being accepted into the University of Melbourne. There he did his BA in Middle Eastern Studies and Arabic, before he received a fellowship to do an AM at the University of Chicago, where he studied Semitic Languages. He took his PhD in linguistics at the University of Texas at Austin, and became a linguistics professor. His wife was, like him, a professor. They are both now retired, and lives in Texas.

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