Claudia Christian
By Carl Slaughter: Claudia Christian played Commander Susan Ivanova for 4 seasons of Babylon 5. Now she’s made the transition to science fiction writer. Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator is the first of a planned trilogy by Tor. Think Xena meets Gladiator meets Game of Thrones meets Roman Empire in space.
Hearty endorsements come from the likes of Mike Resnick and Kevin Anderson. Catch up with Claudia at the 4th annual HonorCon in October. HonorCon is for the military science fiction subgenre.
Website: http://claudiachristian.net/
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In the Galactic Roman Empire, eight noble houses fight for power. One gladiator fights for justice. This is Wolf’s Empire: Gladiator, by Claudia Christian and Morgan Grant Buchanan.
When her mother and brother are murdered, young noblewoman Accala Viridius cries out for vengeance. But the empire is being torn apart by a galactic civil war, and her demands fall on deaf ears. Undeterred, Accala sacrifices privilege and status to train as a common gladiator. Mastering the one weapon available to her?a razor-sharp discus that always returns when thrown–she enters the deadly imperial games, the only arena where she can face her enemies.
But Fortune’s wheel grants Accala no favors?the emperor decrees that the games will be used to settle the civil war, the indigenous lifeforms of the arena-world are staging a violent revolt, and Accala finds herself drugged, cast into slavery and forced to fight on the side of the men she set out to kill.
Set in a future Rome that never fell, but instead expanded to become a galaxy-spanning empire, Accala’s struggle to survive and exact her revenge will take her on a dark journey that will cost her more than she ever imagined.
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Can I say how much I hate this “Rome that never felll” trope? Books with such a setting ALWAYS act like, umpty centuries after the reigns of Tiberius and Nero, there will still be emperors and gladiators and all the trappings. Cultures just don’t stay that much the same for centuries… For that matter, the settings are always based on the early Empire, which had already changed a whole lot by the time of the “fall”.