Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
by Steven Pressfield
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Book Summary Information
Author: Steven PressfieldEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-09-27
ISBN: 055338368X
Number of pages: 400
Publisher: Bantam
Book Reviews of Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae
Book Review: "The opposite of fear is love."
Summary: 4 Stars
The book very successfully brought me into the world of Sparta and Persia that Pressfield imagines to have existed. The characters were tough, brutal and believable. The battle scenes were depicted well and Pressfield explained the tactics well. He described the comraderie of the soldiers and brought out well that in the end all you were fighting for were your brothers here in arms with you. Even the stilted style of his prose brought in the flavor of Attic Greek of the epics.
The problems I had were few. The narrative device of having a Persian historian record the story from a captured Spartan to get the story of the other side. This works for a while. However, this prisoner rambled about his past life. The prisoner then related the stories of other people who then rambled on about the stories of other people. I forgot how many levels Pressfield led me on, but let me just say that it stretched the usefulness of the literary device to its limit and I thought snapped it. The second problem was the dialog. There was a speech from a character called Suicide. Who pretty much speaks in monosyllabic sentences almost throughout the book. At the end, he waxed poetic about his religion (pretty much platonic forms) and love of comrades. It was very moving, very eloquent and relevant to the story. The problem was that it read like an empassioned Jeeves would say in a Wodehouse novel instead of a poor Scythian slave with no education. The dialogs were mixed bag. Sometimes they were witty, gritty and imaginative, other times they are just clunky. Third, all the women in this book were other worldy and extremely wise. If one woman told a funny story or a bawdy joke, it would have helped. Maybe this was intentional to reflect the ancient Greek view of woman.
I strongly recommend the book. I am not a historian so I can not vouch for its accuracy, but the author does a great job of bringing the reader into a different, but brutal and violent world.
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