This is the story of Archimedes, the math genius. Because of his father's health, he has to return home to Syracuse away from wondrous Alexandria, home to the most advanced thinkers of the times.

It's a story of a man who just wanted to do geometry. Easily distracted, Archimedes would stop what he doing to do his calculations on the sand beneath his feet and get lost for hours. I have a found a soul mate (not that I have his math skills but I have been known to get lost in thought for hours at a time).

It's also a story about Marcus, his slave. Not as many reviews mentioned him. I actually kind of miss the past week of spending time with Archimedes and Marcus.

For Gillian Bradshaw, the author, she admitted at the end she struggled with incorporating math into the story but I think she did an admirable job. Math as a subject was there and it made sense and didn't muddle the story down into a math lesson.

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My children and I read this together as part of the Building Your Library Level 8 curriculum.

We loved reading this book. It's perhaps a little melodramatic at times, but the characters seemed realistic and Archimedes seemed more real to us than he had when we'd read about him other places. It's difficult to imagine what life was like in ancient times, and books like this help to remind us that people from long ago were still people and, despite different customs and hygiene and social structures, not really all that different from people today.

We all appreciated the ending, too. We weren't particularly happy about it, but it was a good ending. ( )

2.5 stars. It's light, and decently entertaining, and I probably would have enjoyed it a lot more when I was ten. ( )

I really enjoyed this first reading of a Gillian Bradshaw book. Thought the characters were well drawn and the story well described. ( )

I have shiny sparkly hearts in my eyes. Plot I understand and historical accuracy and complex characters and they talk to each other and they have relationships with each other and these relationships change because there are consequences for actions and the hero is a math genius and omg the only thing I regret is that I cannot read this again for the first time. ( )