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‘Latro In The Mist’ is the combining of two books originally written in the eighties and brought together in this double edition. ‘Soldier In The Mist’ and ‘Soldier Of Arete’ are Gene Wolfe's two fantasy classics set in Greece and Rome.

‘Soldier In The Mist’ introduces us to Latro. His name is given to him by the healer that attends to his wounds when he first appears. He cannot remember anything of his past and each day that passes takes the memories he should be building away.

From one day to the next, he remembers nothing. Using a stylus and parchment he records the days' events so that he can read it every day to understand what is going on. It is his parchment we are reading.

The events throughout the first book are highlighted by his meetings with gods and goddesses, even magical creatures appear to him. The people around him seem to help but some merely hinder, his only real companion being a slave girl, Io, given to him in the Temple of the Shining God. There is also the black man he found with, he speaks a foreign tongue so he is more mysterious than Latro.

From what we can tell, the Great Mother has given the gift of seeing what normal mortals cannot. However, she has also taken away Latro's formation of memories. He has to seek her out and find a way to please her into finding out his past.

This first book is a heavy read. It is, in my eyes, written in a classical way that at times bogs down the actual story, obviously there is a need to keep it as authentic as possible, this goes to extremes. The visitations by gods and goddesses are steeped in confusion because as one man says gods take several names. At times, I was desperately trying to work out who Latro was talking to.

The same can be said of the characters that Latro meets. Due to his continual memory loss he doesn't apply the same name to a person, just a description and at one point one of the characters who was a man turns into a woman. Confused? You will be! The confusion doesn't stop there, Latro and his companions are constantly taken from one person and enslaved by others. You are never really sure what situation Latro is in.

Wolfe's original idea that Latro forgets the previous day is a very clever and fresh development but at times that in itself gets too tiring. This book is a heavy read in all sense of the word. While it is beautifully written and it creates a scene from ancient times, you are continually swamped by content and style, unfortunately this hinders the telling of the story.

‘Soldier Of Arete’ carries straight on from the previous book. It is portrayed as the second parchment that Latro owns and it is said at the very beginning that it is in bad condition and missing some large chunks of material.

It is pretty much more of the same. Latro knows his name but chooses to carry on using Latro. He is still searching for his past and still being used and abused by all who cross his path. The characters are slightly stronger in this second book.

What surprised me with this one was that several threads had been planted in the first book that hadn't registered properly. They were like 'Is that important? It seems important but I'm not sure!' and then these threads are tied up in quite special ways. Latro has a spell put on him in the first book that is ousted in the second and suddenly the mist of your own confusion clears a little.

This parting of the very thing that let the first book down makes me wonder if Wolfe intended his readership to also be in the mist as Latro is!

The characters from the first one seem far deeper and somehow the whole story of Latro forgetting becomes lighter. Latro himself is one of those heroes that are unassuming but at the same time breathtaking. He is the kind of normal hero you can connect with. Io, especially, is a fantastic character and she seems to fill the piece with an inspiring joy and freedom of speech that only a child growing up can use.

Io has a wisdom before her time that makes the story glow. I think for me she was almost as much of a heroine as Latro is the hero.

While I admit that I liked this book an awful lot, it isn't one that I would recommend to anyone who just wants to 'dip' into the fantasy genre. Steeped in historical and mythological information it can seem a little overwhelming.

For me then, I found this book a hard, heavy-going read. It is one of those books though that I would like to read again, on first exposure you don't quite grasp what the hell is going on and having the persistence to read the book again, like watching a film you may finally pick up the details a little better.

There again, should you have to read a book twice to get the complete drift of it? Well to be honest, I think in the case of some of the classics the answer is 'yes'. If you want an entertaining historical read then this book probably isn't for you. The likes of Thomas Holt's 'Song for Nero' are far better at hooking the reader's enjoyment.

By all means have a read of Latro if you like something completely different but you have been warned that this is a veritable quagmire to navigate, even though it is well worth it!

Donna Jones