scenes from the life

[vaznetti]

Over the weekend I read Pressfield's Gates of Fire, which is a novel based on the battle of Thermopylae. It's pretty good -- at any rate, the story carried me through the book. It's written from an outsider perspective, but doesn't quite capture the strangeness of Spartan society. I was talking about it with my husband, and he made the point that the narrator is strongly pro-Spartan, for a set of reasons that make sense within that particular point of view. Then he added that it's always a bit off-putting to get that pro-Spartan perspective as the narrative voice, since he doesn't want to think well of the Spartans. (at which point I said the conversational equivalent of ::facepalm::)

I also found the book very, very straight, which of course is what you'd expect for a book that's aimed at straight white men -- but it's so bizarre because Spartan society is so intensely homoerotic that even a novel like this, where I don't think the author wants to have that kind of subtext at all, can't avoid it. The men are always admiring each other's beauty (the beauty of women, too, but it's not an either-or kind of thing in Sparta). It was one of the things that struck me about Persian Fire, actually -- that Holland doesn't just pull a veil over that side of Spartan society -- but of course in a popular history you want to include as much sex as humanly possible, on the principle that readers like that kind of thing.

I found it hard to read more than two or three sentences of fanfic over the weekend, but will get on my beta-reading, writing and just general reading-and-feedbacking now.

Comments

[vaznetti]

How one can make the lives of either Alcibiades or Alexander boring is beyond me (and yet then again, the Alexander movie really was tedious beyond words -- I never know whether to blame Robin Lane Fox for that or not.) I mean, it's Alcibiades! How is he not fascinating?

I think I gave him a pass for the lack of homosexual relationships in Gates of Fire because the most obvious missing one was between a boy in his early teens and a grown man, and I can see a modern author refusing to go there. And even with the homosexual relationships cut out, the book was (at least to someone who reads a lot of slash!) pretty homoerotic. But denying the evidence on the Sacred Band is kind of unforgivable.

An aside which might amuse you: I'm reading a fantasy series now -- by James Barclay, and the first is called Cry of the Newborn -- which my husband enjoyed but I'd been ignoring until he looked up from the latest and said, "You know, these books are basically the X-Men in ancient Rome." This turned out to be false advertising, as so far, there is no Scott.

[vaznetti]

It isn't really Rome -- it's kind of jumble, possibly to allow the author to put manipular legions and cataphracts into the same battle. I'm a couple hundred pages in and things are finally starting to happen, so I'm not sure the series is worth your limited reading time.

I have a very clear memory of discussing an X-Men-in-ancient-Rome (or maybe Greece) AU with someone on lj, but no idea what the context was.

[greenelephant.livejournal.com]

LJ ate my first comment, but may regurgitate it later. Briefly, then: would you recommend Persian Fire as summer not-quite-work but not-pure-fluff reading?

[vaznetti]

Definitely -- it's very readable!

[missbucklebury.livejournal.com]

I may have to find a copy of Persian Fire as I haven't read it yet and you've piqued my interest.

Have you read Spartan by Valerio Massimo Manfredi? I really enjoyed it and it was thwe book that set me off on an ancient greek reading frenzy. The original book was written in Italian and there are maybe one ore two passages where the translation is a little stilted, but I'd recommend it never the less.

[vaznetti]

I do recommend Persian Fire. I liked it a lot. And I'll take a look at Spartan -- we do have a copy in the house, here. (It's hard to tell with translations, sometimes, whether stylistic issues are in the translation of the original, at least that's what I find.)

[octavia-b.livejournal.com]

My husband read Gates of Fire some time ago but his only comment was ::shrug:: "It was ok." In depth and informative: *grin*

[vaznetti]

Ha!

Well, it wasn't a great book, but it was pretty good.

[vaznetti]

I know! I mean, whatever else the Spartans were, they were not very, very straight!

[morpheusrex.livejournal.com]

Hrmn, the negative amazon reviews delayed my priority of its acquisition. It seems that it might be slightly better than I thought. I'll try to knock it off my list this summer.

Speaking of lists - does anyone know of an historical fiction reading list, or a priority order? S.M. Stirling novels are fun but they're leaving me increasingly frustrated. I enjoyed Turtledove's Misplaced Legion books, but he must have suffered a concussion at some point during that North/South series...

[vaznetti]

I do have an annotated list, and a few links to web pages, but they're all in Canada. Ask me again in September!

The book isn't exactly a work of great literature, but it has its moments.