Very excellent, and satisfies my guilty pleasure for a Roman centurion + Jewish/Christian girl romance. Much, much better than the movie version, with beautiful language, interesting dialogue and noble characters, believable motivations, and a very gradual and convincing conversions of the Roman/Greek protagonists to Christianity. Very rare that I see such nicely handled conversions, though I have to admit, I rarely look now. The only fault I really found was the author's love of the word "saunter". Everyone saunters, guys, girls, slaves, Roman tribunes....no one can walk normally. But it's a minor and amusing nitpick for otherwise great classic fiction. 
 Now, the only reason this book may end up in the stalled category is because...I saw the movie. Technically, for a Christian, the ending is not sad at all. But more often than not, my thinking tends towards the normal-of-this-world variety, and if the book ends the same way as the movie, then it's a SAD AND TRAGIC ENDING. The unfinished book weighs down my bag every day. Maybe I'll be able to force myself to finish it soon.... 
 ETA: 
 I did finish it finally, and no, the ending did not feature a corny montage of the 2 lovers mounting a stairway into heaven with clouds and angels, etc. as they symbolically went to death. Yay for that!