Fortuna is an interesting journey with a pair of dice through history . I found this to be a good introduction to many points in history. One could pick any chapter to explore those events individually. The common thread of the dice added a fun angle that would be wonderful if it were true. The author notes added helpful insight.

This is a whistlestop tour through history from the gods on mount Olympus through to the twentieth century following the fortunes of a pair of dice handed down and around in a somewhat arbitrary fashion to. I enjoyed some chapters more than others, particularly those that featured ordinary people rather than very famous historical characters and often told events of European history. I liked the easy style of writing which made the tales very readable, narrating Henry VIII’s pursuit of Anne Boleyn through a sequence of letters was an interesting approach to a well known story, but it was difficult to tell whether the author was aiming for fact or fiction as I felt it came down on the side of non-fiction more. This was emphasised by the informative ‘author’s notes’ which interleaved the chapters explaining which elements of the chapter were based on real events, effectively repeating much of what had already been read. Leaving these notes for optional reading at the end of the book might have made the narrative flow a bit more smoothly.
It is certainly encompasses a variety of characters and a vast passage of time, if not space but it might have been interesting to explore some areas and characters of history that are less well known.

Thank you to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC.

This was a fascinating concept and I enjoyed the use of historical and how the Greek mythology element worked overall. I enjoyed getting into this and thought the overall story worked well together and was invested in what was going on, the characters in each setting worked in this book. I enjoyed the way James Leslie-Melville wrote this and left me wanting to read more.