"Pompeii" by Robert Harris

Pompeii by Robert Harris, gave all of the information about Pompeii as a city and gave a detailed account of the volcano’s eruption. It had all of the information of a history book, but was a novel. This aspect, especially having a plot and characters, made the story more interesting to read and made the event seem more personable. Personally, when reading about a natural disaster of this magnitude, I tend to forget it actually happened to people who were innocently going about their daily lives. The fact that Harris used characters with backgrounds and lives made the story come to life and seem like more than just a history/ science lesson. Harris also tracked what would have been the activities of the volcano as the story progressed towards the fatal eruption. This connected really well with what was going on in the story; for each strange occurrence in the town (like random earthquakes and the disappearance of water due to the blockage of the water system) was an answer with what was happening underground in the volcano. Though the book started out a bit slow, I couldn’t put it down for the last few chapters. I would definitely recommend this book because it's not only a great read, but also has interesting information about volcanoes, daily life in a city influenced by the Roman Empire, and it's a good story about what really happened to people during the famous eruption.