SOURCE: "On the Way to the Forum," in Washington Post Book World, November 21, 1993, p. 4.

In the following review, Tarr offers a generally favorable assessment of Fortune's Favorites, which she finds more fluent and engaging than the previous two novels in McCullough's Roman history series.

Colleen McCullough has found her stride. Fortune's Favorites, the third massive volume of her saga of ancient Rome, picks up where The Grass Crown left off. Sulla, both hero and anti-hero of the previous volume, has come to both the height and the end of his career. The beautiful, deadly creature has grown old and hideous and more powerful than any Roman before him—he demands and receives the office of Dictator of Rome.

The younger generation, meanwhile, is coming into its own, as the middle of the first century B.C. approaches. If The First Man in Rome was Marius's story and The...