Rating: 
Summary: This author shows talent!
Review: Miranda finds herself stranded in Pompei when her time travel experiment goes wrong and her homing beacon does not work. Suddenly, a woman from the twenty first century is stuck in the first century, and rather than being a respected scientist, she is now a slave.Yet, Miranda is not a pessimist; she looks upon this as an opportunity to learn about the ancient world in a whole new light. Servants frequently know more about the real world than their masters, so this is a real learning experience. Using her knowledge of the future and folklore, she makes a place for hereself and even manages to find a new family, and love. **** Fans of Diana Galbandon will find this a real treat. Miranda is a spunky, determined young lady. With well researched detail, Ms. East both educates and entertains. Hopefully, we can look for more in the near future from this talented lady. Reviewed by Amanda Killgore.
Rating: 
Summary: Reads as if intended for a younger audience.
Review: Miranda is a modern woman sent back to Pompeii in the years before it is destroyed by earthquake and the famous volcanic eruption. Within the first 2 pages she is in the past and there are very few references to her life in modern times throughout the rest of the book. Poor fishermen pull her out of the sea and sell her to a slave market for money. Although Miranda is naïve about the myriad potential sufferings of a slave, the possession of a device intended to transport her back into the future at the press of a button gives her the courage to submit to slavery and remain in the past, thus satisfying her curiosity about ancient Pompeii. Miranda luckily winds up in the home of a wealthy couple and their 2 children. She eventually raises her status by telling stories and playing wonderful music. She befriends Tullia, the 13-year-old daughter of the house and after some months, she becomes her attendant. She also becomes the mistress to the head of the household, Marcus Tullius, and they fall in love. If you are seeking a time-travel romance with depth, excitement and adventure that you can get lost in for hours, this is not the book that you are looking for. I read it in a few short hours. If it weren't for the few loves scenes, I would think it was intended for a much younger audience because the writing style is so like a child's fairytale. This is not a bad thing. It is just not what I had expected when I started the book. The plot is thin and predictable, but told in such a simple way with bits of information about life in Pompeii and several enchanting tales told by Miranda that the result is a very quick enjoyable read. There is no depth or passion to the romance. There is not much in the way of time travel having a dramatic effect on plot (aside from one satisfying prediction of an earthquake). The book suffers from some repetition and typographical errors and a far too neat conclusion. But it has a happy ending and I still enjoyed it.
Rating:
Summary: A quick, entertaining read.
Review: Miranda is quiet, petite, knowledgeable in Latin and Roman history and so volunteers as the first subject for a time travel experiment. Things don't go quite as promised, and Miranda quickly finds herself sold as a slave, and unable to activate her "rescue" disc that would supposedly return her to the present. She is stuck and must make her own way. Miranda is amazingly naive for being selected for this sort of time travel mission, yet she is able to draw upon her own resources to make friends, understand the household politics of the upperclass home she is sold into, and use her musical and story telling talents to distinguish herself. Rebecca East has done a great job in describing Roman life in Pompei of 62 A.D. with the households, streets, politics, and customs. She has Miranda obssess too frequently about things that upset her. For instance, her fretting about falling in love with a slave owner will fill paragraphs of one chapter, only to be repeated at the start of the next. This gives Miranda an almost whining and dithering quality which I didn't care for. However, this is a quick and entertaining read with all problems neatly resolved by the final chapter.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful story!
Review: Miranda takes part in a time travel experiment because she is the logical choice, an academic who knows Latin, Greek, and ancient history. Her objective is to go back to Pompeii, observe, and bring back information. The first part of the experiment works: she goes back in time. However, after her escape mechanism fails to return her to the 21st century, she needs to adapt to life in ancient Pompeii, where she has been sold as a slave to a man with whom she finds herself falling in love. The story is compelling and engrossing - a very fun read! I highly recommend it!
Rating:
Summary: An Excellent Yet Inprobable Tale
Review: Ms. East is clearly an accomplished storyteller. She deftly weaves a complex tale of adventure and love into a piece which is both a historical guide book and a good read. I would recommend it to the casual reader for it's strength of plot portraying a strong women in hostile world. To the student of history I would commend the detail and descriptive content used by Ms. East. She is clearly a scholar in the Roman period, yet she doesn't weigh the reader down with voluminous detail. As a lifelong student of history myself I found this piece quite useful. This is not to say there are not some difficulties with this piece. The welding of the science fiction aspects of the piece with the core plot is clumsy and might turn the reader away in the first Chapter. A twist on the Michael Crichton's Timeline , I would not go so far as to calling it a blatant ripoff, however, the time travel theme is very difficult to reconcile with credible historical fiction. Ms. East also has a tendency to make her protagonist nearly super-human both with regard to physical stamina and mental/emotional control. Miranda would have been more believable with more human foibles and fewer demi-God characteristics. The feminist, strong women drum holds a true and steady beat for today's storytelling, however, role models such as Boudicca have been greatly distorted by political pundits and biased historians over the centuries. An additional point of contention comes to mind regarding Miranda's prophecies as a way of explaining her historical foreknowledge. The Cybeles were a fixture in the area of Neapolis and Cumae centuries before the setting of this piece and were still in place in the first century A.D. I find it highly unlikely that the success of predicting the earthquake would not have yielded either more notoriety or negative political attention on Miranda due to the proximity to these religious icons and the improbability that the Tullius slaves would not have leaked it to the local population. In turn, give the limited degrees of separation from Miranda to the Emperor Nero himself, it is quite likely she would have been dragged before him, willing or not. Again, this is a story well worth reading and a lesson worth learning. For lovers of Italy and it's history, well worth the time and money, and if your planning a visit to sites at Pompeii and Herculaneum a must read.
Rating:
Summary: A story well told!
Review: Rebecca East has done an incredible job bringing Pompeii to life during A.D. 62, the beginning of Nero's reign. I could taste the dust, feel the heat, share the feelings with her heroine and the family that comes to love her. I really enjoyed reading this book and the versions of stories she tells the family based on her 21st century education. This was a great time-travel experience.
Rating:
Summary: Pompeii Comes to Life
Review: Rebecca East has done an incredible job bringing Pompeii to life during A.D. 62, the beginning of Nero's reign. I could taste the dust, feel the heat, share the feelings with her heroine and the family that comes to love her. I really enjoyed reading this book and the versions of stories she tells the family based on her 21st century education. This was a great time-travel experience.
Rating:
Summary: A story well told!
Review: Rebecca East has managed to pull off the near impossible. She has written a rather good piece of historical literature! It takes a brave soul to write an historical novel, as rarely can an author get the right mix of fiction and history. More often than not they will become engrossed on superfluous historical detail and the story becomes rather heavy going and little more than an afterthought with characters becoming very one dimensional. On the other side of the coin, although the story is fine, the history is exceptionally inaccurate and heavily distorted to fit around the tale. Here is a rare example of a book that has managed to overcome this obstacle. Ms East has written an enchanting story that manages to harmoniously combine fact and fiction. The adventures of the stranded time traveller Miranda are simply wonderful and this book helped persuade me a trip to Pompeii is in order to walk down the streets so beautifully described in the book. The story also revolves around ordinary people, in this case the slaves of a household, rather than a significant historical figure and as such stays well clear of trudging down the well-trod path of retelling the life of a well-documented figure. Although Ms West sprinkles a few historical figures of note into her book, they are minor players in the story, a momentary diversion from the narrative, thus leaving the story free of the restraints a known timeline would bring. AD 62: Pompeii is an enjoyable read, with some strong likeable characters and wonderful plot line, indeed my one and only criticism is that it isn't long enough! Not wanting to get weighed down in the science fiction aspect of how Miranda ended up back in first century Pompeii is fully understandable, as this is not the focus of the book, but all the same, I would have loved to have had a few more pages devoted to the journey back through history. Ms East has written a wonderful novel I would recommend to all. The story fuels the imagination from start to finish. Fingers crossed a second book will soon follow!
Rating:
Summary: delightful historical novel
Review: The researchers have learned a lot about time travel including weight being a key factor. They decide to send someone two millennium into the past, but besides the smallness requirement, the person must have knowledge of the era. That is why Miranda is chosen to go back in time. Miranda makes it to A.D. 62: POMPEII, but something went wrong and retrieval is not an option as the homing device fails. Thus she is stranded in the first century net of a fishermen who sell her as a house slave. Performing menial tasks bores Miranda so she begins telling tales and making predictions. Soon she comes to the attention of family member Marcus, who is fascinated with her. As they fall in love, she worries that she might return to her biological present at any time while he wonders if a strange slave can be the loving wife of a freeman? A.D. 62: Pompeii is a delightful historical novel with a touch of romance used more to highlight the classes and a bit of science thrown in to propel a modern woman into an ancient society. The story line is loaded with a picturesque look at Pompeii about a decade and a half before the devastating volcanic eruption buried the city. So filled with the ambiance of the times, the plot moves at a deliberate moderate pace. Fans who seek action need to go elsewhere, but those readers interested at a vivid insightful gaze at the past will believe Rebecca East is Miranda having finally found her way back to the future. Harriet Klausner
Rating:
Summary: what if?
Review: Thirty-something Miranda isn't comfortable or happy in her life. Her studies have steeped her in classical archaeology with a good working knowledge of Latin & the Roman world. She has always longed for distant days as well as to be a heroine. When a group of researchers discover the means to transport people back in time, she signs up. She is the perfect guinea pig--no family, no marriage, no ties. She lands in the Mediterranean Sea, literally, & is hauled up in the net of two fishermen brothers, who take her to land, to their mother, who sells her into slavery. A fascinating, well-researched tale of a simpler world where a complex society of arranged marriages, slavery, politics & relationships keep everyone on their toes. & where love & morality is something else entirely. Rebecca East has told a rich, mature & satisfying story.
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