How glad I am that I did! The Sand Reckoner is a hugely enjoyable, lighthearted tale about Archimedes and the way in which his engineering projects helped protect his home city of Syracuse. The author has woven a love story between Archimedes and the sister of King Hieron of Syracuse and there is also a side-love story between Archimedes’ slave and his sister.

Mathematics does make quite a contribution to this story and works really well. Archimedes is portrayed as a genius sometimes completely lost in his own world with his slave Marcus keeping him safe. The characters all have their own voices and are believable – especially the difficulties that they have over mistakes that they make. King Hieron is almost too good to be true, but a historical note from the author suggests that he really was like that. Let’s hope so!

It was also interesting about the differences between the Romans and the Greeks in antiquity and how they saw each other. Although the classics are often studied in schools and colleges this book really brought it to life for me. I highly recommend this book to those who like to transport themselves to other times in history through reading.