It resumed when he was declared cancer-free, then halted again when the prognosis proved premature and he grew ill again and died. More to our present point, in 2010 the Starz TV network produced a stylish, extrovertly gory series called 'Spartacus: Blood and Sand' which purported to dramatize the early formative years of its title character.The show's star, the statuesque Andy Whitfield, was diagnosed with cancer, and the show temporarily halted production. Fast wasn't even the first modern novelist to seize on the story's dramatic potential - Arthur Koestler did it before him, and of course there was Stanley Kubrick's wooden, incredibly effective 1960 movie. a plucky, scrappy band of some 75 gladiators from the gladiator-school of one Batiatus in Capua who overcame their guards, overran their barracks, and used the very arena skills they'd been taught in order to fight their way to freedom. After all, most common readers out there tend to forget that novelist Howard Fast wasn't wholesale inventing things when he wrote his 1951 massive best-seller Spartacus - he was working with a kernel of actual ancient history, an utterly irresistible story from Plutarch about a doomed slave-uprising on Italian soil in 73 B.C. Clements Titan Books, 2012An overheard wisecrack about Jonathan Clements' new novel Spartacus: Swords and Ashes, delivered dripping in sarcasm: 'Some guy just re-wrote Spartacus? What's next, some chick just re-writing Gone with the Wind?'The confusion is arguably understandable. Read more all battles are fought upon the sands.Spartacus: Swords and Ashes by J.

In the arena blood and death are primetime entertainment. Seeing an opportunity, ambitious lanista Quintus Batiatus plots to seize the dead man's estate.

The gladiator Spartacus, the new Champion of Capua, fights at the graveside of a rich man who was brutally murdered by his own slaves. This original novel from the world of Spartacus: Blood and Sand tells a brand- new story of blood, sex and politics set in the uncompromising, visceral world of the arena. Some Legends are Written in Blood! Spartacus is the hit TV show which combines blood-soaked action, exotic sexuality, villainy and heroism. Description for Spartacus Mass Market Paperback.

Spartacus by J.M. Clements