Kingdom of the Wicked: Book One -- Rules, by Helen Dale

What if the Industrial Revolution had occurred centuries earlier, in Ancient Rome?  For one thing, the history of Christianity would look much different.  Helen Dale fleshes out this intellectual exercise in Kingdom of the Wicked: Book One--Rules.  In her world, we find the Roman Empire enjoying a level of technological sophistication roughly similar to our own late-20th or early 21st century timeline.  As in our own history, the Romans occupy Judaea, a backwards backwater.  Due to their religious traditions and relative poverty, the Jewish people lag far behind the Romans, technologically and economically. 

Dale's focus is primarily on the legal case against the charismatic teacher Yeshua ben Yusuf (Jesus, son of Joseph, in case you missed it), after he and his followers cause a ruckus in the Temple courts.  The Roman lawyer Linnaeus, despite his nationality, is somewhat sympathetic to Yeshua's case. Blending the familiar historical account with the technology of Dale's world, I enjoyed, for example, the lawyer's reconstruction of the events of that day via reviewing the CCTV footage.  It's fun to imagine what our modern Christian faith would be like if we had some footage from the events of Jesus' life!

Besides Jesus, we meet Caiaphas and Pilate, in their familiar roles.  In fact, their sons are pals.  Yehuda (Judas) is a leader in the revolutionary anti-Roman occupation group.  A very young Saul makes some cameo appearances.  Mary Magdalena is a former news anchor.  Jesus's disciples and other characters familiar to readers of the Gospels appear throughout.

Despite the biblical source material, this is not a Christian book.  It's roughly parallel to the Gospels, but doesn't present the Gospel.  It's a secular retelling that spends much more time depicting the Roman pagan lifestyle, particularly their sexual mores, than Jewish moral traditions, and focusses on the legal machinations of the Roman rule.  (Content notice: the sex is quite suggestive and pervasive, but not explicit.  The language is definitely crude; it would easily earn an R-rating from the MPAA.) 

On one level, I was a little bit in awe of the intellectual exercise that writing this book must have been for Dale.  Like any good alternative history, she constructs a believably intricate alternative reality; much more than simply adding a layer of anachronistic technology on biblical history, she has re-imagined centuries of human history and projected it onto this particular era.  Given this historical effort, I felt bad being disappointed and maybe a little bored by the story.  It sags under its own wait, with little pay off.  My delight in the possibilities of the setting quickly dimmed as I found myself skimming more and more through the book.