Typically lean and sleek novel from Holland, this time set in the 5th century, as Atilla contemplates another invasion of Italy with his Huns and Germans. Tacs, a Hun scout left to make his own way back with the body of his dead friend after the last attempt to reach Rome, forms an unlikely friendship with the son of a German king. Their two tribes could not be more different, and with the fundamental and recurring problem of European history, the strong leader who puts together a prototype viable state only for the whole thing to fall apart on his death about to repeat, the whole thing ends in a welter of violence and tested loyalties.

Holland's smooth, polished, diamond-hard prose sucks the melodrama and extraneous details out of historical fiction like venom from a snake's fang, leaving a strong, muscular, stripped-down tale of young men finding their places in a turbulent world.