Review - Imperatrix by S.P. Somtow

Sporus’ master Petronius is dead, having taken his own life after being implicated in a plot to overthrow Emperor Nero. Petronius freed Sporus before he died, but nobody is truly free from the attentions of the mad emperor. Without his protector, Sporus must quickly learn how to navigate the ups and downs of Nero’s mercurial temperament, as well as the intrigues of the imperial court. It will take all his skills to keep his head, not to mention other parts of his anatomy.

This second book of the Nero and Sporus trilogy picks up right where Delicatus left off. Naturally, you need to have read the first book before this one to know who all the players are. As in the first book, the narration takes the form of Sporus relating his life story to the slave who is making him ready to be executed in the circus. We may know what fate ultimately awaits the young man, but the story of how he got there is still fascinating.

We get to know Sporus a lot better in this volume of the story. Without the guiding hand of Petronius, Sporus faces trying to figure out who he really is. As a puer delicatus slave, the boy was simply an empty vessel into which the older men he was forced to entertain poured their wants and desires. With Nero setting his rather bizarre sights on Sporus, the young man wants to preserve some part of him that is truly his own.

We get to see a lot more of Nero in this book. The emperor is clearly mentally unstable, and everyone around him seems to know it. Nero’s madness is depicted as a sort of bi-polar disorder overlaid with some serious mommy issues. He definitely has problems relating to women, which makes the idea of Sporus as empress so inviting. There’s not much to suggest the roots of the emperor’s insanity, but the historical record probably doesn’t exist and ancient Rome was a really weird place, even by today’s standards.

This installment of the story ends with Sporus’ castration on the orders of Nero, to keep him more feminine and clear the way to declare him empress. It’s something you know is coming, but it’s still disturbing when it happens. The closing chapters covering this event make interesting, thought-provoking, reading and help drive home the theme of Sporus’ lack of control over his own identity.

“Betrayal” is available from Amazon (commissionable link).