What I Have Been Reading - Caesar's Legion and Nero's Killing Machine

It is time for ancient warfare.  I have been reading a series of books by Stephen Dando-Collins about the history of the Roman legions from the late republic to the middle imperial period.  the author was a complete unknown to me until a friend gave me 4 of his recent books.  Who is Stephen Dando-Collins?  According to Amazon:

Stephen Dando-Collins is the author of Caesar's Legion: The Epic Saga of Julius Caesar's Elite Tenth Legion and the Armies of Rome, Nero's Killing Machine: The True Story of Rome's Remarkable Fourteenth Legion, Cleopatra's Kidnappers: How Caesar's Sixth Legion Gave Egypt to Rome and Rome to Caesar, and Mark Antony's Heroes: How the Third Gallica Legion Saved an Apostle and Created an Emperor. He is an Australian-born researcher, editor, and author who has spent the last three decades identifying and studying the individual legions of the Roman army of the late Republic and the empire of the Caesars.

This description is a little vague on details.  Wikipedia is a little more helpful.  It turns out that Stephen Dando-Collins is also a novelist and, more importantly, a former advertising executive.  He has retired to the exotic Tasmania and now writes full time.

Stephen Dando-Collins is not a present or former historian.  He has spent 30 years studying and tracing the history of all the legions.  This makes his books better in many ways.  First, the books read like novels which makes it easier for the reader to follow them to the end.  True, the books seem to end weakly, just like the Roman empire.  Second, the author makes no attempt to follow the legions into the chaos and disintegration of the late 4th century, when legions were reduced to 1000 man permanent garrisons and cavalry began to be the dominant arm of the Roman central armies.  The decline and fall of the empire is not a story of the legions as they were constituted for the first 300 years of the empire.  It is a story of barbarians, inside the empire and out.

Stephen Dando-Collins books have a dramatic flair that makes the books very enjoyable.  The legions provide a way to describe some very dramatic events in Roman history from the view point of the figures.  The story of the 10th legion spends most of its pages on Caesar and his campaigns in Gaul, Britain and during the civil war.  In Nero's Killing Machine, the author spends a lot time discussing the revolt in Britain.  I am presently reading Mark Antony's Hero's which spends a similar amount of time discussing Rome's campaigns in the middle east, including the wars in Judea, Armenia and Parthia.

You can find Stephen Dando-Collins books here