ספר מעולה
הביקורת נכתבה ביום ראשון, 29 בדצמבר, 2013
ע"י מרינה מ.
ע"י מרינה מ.
In 480 B.C., an invading Persian army, two-million strong, came to the mountain pass of Thermopylae in eastern Greece. Led by King Xerxes, they were met by the finest three hundred Spartan warriors where the rocky confines were so narrow that the Persian multitudes and their cavalry would be at least partially neutralized. Here, the Greek loyalists hoped, the elite force could hold off, at least for a short while, the invading millions.
The well-known story of the 300 Spartans lies in the ba
It is told from the PoV of a PoW, a young man called Xeones, who served under a Spartan officer and fought in the battle of the Hot Gates, against millions of assembled nations of the Persian Empire under Xerxes.
As the only living survivor, he tells his story to a Persian scribe, who writes it down for the king, not only the battle itself, but his whole life, his desire to serve Sparta, the lessons he learned and the people he met, all who has made such a lasting impression on him, who became his friends and brothers-in-arms.
If this isn't the ultimate book about the famous 300, it should be.
Written sometimes with almost military precision, it's a literary masterpiece, for all genders and ages.
The plot, sometimes vast, sometimes intimate, always flowing, jumping back in time when necessary, to complete the picture of Sparta and its people.
Though at times the military scenes can read too modern, unsurprising as the author himself a former soldier, I can only quote one of my favourite TV characters Geoffrey Tennant as a justification :"War is war, soldiers are soldiers, ambition is ambition".
Even more than the plot, I loved the characters, each an individual, with stories of their own. And isn't it funny that the best male characters I ever read about were written by women and the best female ones were written by men?
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