A really enjoyable book that shows the events of the classical world which most impacted the modern west. It does not dive in very deeply on a specific moment in history, but rather shows a big picture of the history of the Greek and Roman civilizations. I think it does a great job of summarizing what is a huge amount of information and is a great starting point for more readings on the classical world. It even has a further readings section to help with this. Because it is structured on various cities rather than time periods sometimes the timeline is not exactly clear. It also does not detail about topics like cultural import and exchange with other civilizations (like Egypt for example) or the treatment of women and slaves during this periods. The author sort of addresses this, he acknowledges this discussions but does not focus on them in order to present the topics which are most influential to our world today. I kinda get this because topics are very important but also could fill volumes, which would be too much for a book that is meant to be an easy read for people not very informed about the classical world.

It's gonna be hard to put into words how much I loved this book. I can say that I read like a maniac and had to stop myself because it was distracting me from everything else and every time I stopped I couldn't stop thinking about what happened. I was stressed at work thinking about the book.

What I loved the most was the relationship between the two main characters. Looking back at their moments together after finishing, it paints such a beautiful and yet painful story.

The story was missing just something to get it to be perfect in my opinion. Some of the high tension moments felt a bit anticlimatic compared to the build up for me, the story shined more when the characters were in focus rather than the action. And even though I praised the relationship between the main 2, the time travel plot left some holes on Joe's side, at least in my opinion.

Overall I enjoyed myself so much reading this and it's a total punch to your feelings.