The Temple of Fortuna Successfully Concludes One of the Best Historical Trilogies In Years

If internet culture is to be believed, an awful lot of folks are spending a rather prodigious amount of time thinking about the Roman Empire. Here’s hoping at least some of those people have managed to discover author Elodie Harper’s excellent Wolf Den trilogy, a fierce, vividly imagined, and deeply feminist saga that pushes the boundaries about what historical fiction is supposed to be and do. Its final installment, The Temple of Fortuna, arrives this week, and cements Harper’s place alongside other game-changers in this genre space like Hilary Mantel and Ken Follett.  A series ender that’s immensely satisfying on every level, the book once again wrestles with complex questions of agency, morality, and survival, even as it spins a compelling story of romance, politics, and unimaginable disaster.

As The Temple of Fortuna opens, Amara, a former enslaved whore at a Pompeiian brothel who has fought, sacrificed, betrayed, and manipulated during her fight to attain freedwoman status is now in Rome itself, the lover of the city’s wealthiest freedman. She’s left her daughter Rufina and her ex-lover Philo behind in Pompeii and finds herself involved in some mild political espionage in the wake of Vespasian’s death, as the tumultuous relationship between his sons—the short-reigned emperor Titus and future despot Domitian—takes center stage. 

Though many internet bros insist they spend a lot of time contemplating the mysteries of ancient Rome, it’s clear that Harper actually does so, infusing Amara’s time in the Eternal City with a sense of lived-in realism, from the sheer scale of massive public events like Vespasian’s funeral to the darker realities of life in the Suburra slums. If this book has a significant flaw is that Amara only spends such a brief amount of time in Rome, most of which is spent struggling to befriend Domitian’s mistress and seeing distressing signs of the violence he will one day become famous for. Instead, our heroine is sent back to Pompeii after a brief few months, to face the destiny we’ve always known was waiting for her.

It’s not (much of) a spoiler to say that The Temple of Fortuna is a disaster book. The eruption of Vesuvius has essentially felt inevitable since The Wolf Den revealed it was set in AD 74. Still, Harper handles this (in)famous event with her usual dedication to accuracy in both storytelling and emotion. The disaster itself is described in horrifying, realistic detail, as earthquakes begin, the skies above Pompeii suddenly darken, and much of the city is transformed by what feels like a relentless swirl of neverending ash. The increasing difficulty people have moving through it, as well as the buildings that begin to collapse only add to the sense of steadily suffocating dread and the panic among those searching for loved ones lost in the noise and darkness is horrifying to behold. Though we likely all knew, logically, that a great many of the characters we cared about in the first two novels of this series likely wouldn’t survive to its conclusion, it’s quite another thing to be faced with their deaths—or, worse, the simply unknowable nature of their fates. 

Smartly, however, Harper doesn’t conclude her story with Pompeii’s end—as I suspect many readers might have expected her to do. Instead, she digs into the disaster’s aftermath, including the refugee crisis that resulted in many cities throughout the region. (And, that, unfortunately, still feels incredibly timely for so much of the world today.) Her dedication to realistically exploring the lives of regular Roman citizens—those who are enslaved, freedmen, or simply middle class—is particularly in evidence here as, naturally, those groups experience the horrors of Vesuvius very differently. It’s also a fascinating look at the many opportunities for change and advancement available to some in the wake of a disaster of this scale—in a world where everything is burnable and buriable—and the ways that some risked everything to redefine their lives. 

But despite its increasingly epic scope, The Temple of Fortuna is, most importantly, a satisfying conclusion to Amara’s journey. The former she-wolf is a deeply flawed protagonist and has not always been the easiest heroine to like; she’s made many selfish and questionable moral choices over the course of the previous novels in the name of her own survival. Even here, after all her success and the relative comfort and influence she now enjoys, she’s still constantly anxious about her social and financial stability. Given what she’s endured, it makes sense, and Harper’s books thankfully don’t judge Amara for any of them. Instead, they repeatedly set those decisions in a proper historical context. After all, for women like Amara, there are no good choices, simply a slate of bad and worse options that promise better odds of survival, and no guarantee of success. 

The Temple of Fortuna, unlike its immediate predecessor The House with the Golden Door, sees Amara struggle much more consistently with what she wants out of her life—-for herself, for the daughter she claims she’s doing everything for, for the world she left behind, and the one she now claims. That the immovable object of her own anxiety and indecisiveness runs directly into the unstoppable force that is a disaster that will reverberate through centuries to come is perhaps the only sort of conflict that could ever have forced her to truly reckon the woman she’s become along the way. 

Harper’s Wolf Den trilogy is exactly the sort of historical fiction we need more of: Not just a great story with compelling characters at its center, but one that gives the figures from history who have rarely had the chance to speak for themselves a voice. Women like Amara have been left to languish on the sidelines of the history we’d rather remember for far too long, but with Harper’s help—-and hopefully that of more writers like her—-we’ll see them all get the chance to step into the light.

The Temple of Fortuna is available now.

Lacy Baugher Milas is the Books Editor at Paste Magazine, but loves nerding out about all sorts of pop culture. You can find her on Twitter @LacyMB