How to Rule an Empire and Get Away With It
by K J Parker (Orbit, 2020); audiobook read by Ray Sawyer (Isis, 2020)
The besieged stalemate that Parker envisages evokes Hannibal’s 15-year occupation of Italy, only with sardonic observational humour and a cynical, world-weary thespian placed in charge of the defence. Sawyer’s audiobook reading matches the protagonist’s pessimism a little too closely, to enervating effect.