» Tides of War

Tides of War Reviews

Customer Rating:
Summary: Pressfield Redux
Comment: I doubted whether Mr. Pressfield could match his earlier masterpiece, Gates of Fire. Well, he matched it these respects: sparkling, lyrical characterizations and dialogue (especially speeches), compelling battle scenes and realistic descriptions of everyday life 2,400 years ago.

But in the storytelling, he fell a bit short. I believe as much as 20% of the text could have been edited out, making the narrative flow much better and and the plot less choppy and confusing. To be fair, however, the twenty-seven year Peloponnesian War was itself a choppy and confusing history, with generals and city states switching sides, a bizarre large scale Athenian attack at Sicily with the Spartans at the gates of Athens, inexplicable exiles and executions of (even successful) generals, shifting, illogical tactics and strategies, a frightful plague (typhoid), barbaric sieges and sea battles throughout the Aegean.

One thing that definitely comes through is the danger of a pure democracy like 5th century B.C. Athens. The Athenian assembly was essentially a leaderless mob marked by caprice, greed, impatience, passion, class conflict and moral corruption. Athens had an empire, a large unopposed fleet, a huge treasury, a large population and a flowering culture. Sparta, an oligarchy, had none of that but still prevailed in the end. There is a political lesson to be learned that is still relevant today.

Don't make my mistake of reading this novel without a grounding in the history of the Athens/Sparta conflict. I plan on reading Donald Kagan's The Peloponnesian War to fill in the gaps, after which I may reread Tides of War.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: An Impossible Read
Comment: "Tides of War" is way too detailed, though rather interesting historical fiction. The era, the ethos, the history - all are fascinating. I took this book to Europe with me on a recent 3-week stay in France, and managed to read a few pages each day with my morning (5.20 Euro!!) caffe au lait. But the story did not compel.

The amount of detail far was too great, thus losing this reader in the detail and causing me to forget where we were in the story. And, I confess, I had a hard time, on occasion, figuring out who was fighting whom, what side they were on and why. I simply got bored, having become lost in the detail. The plot, if there was one, was far too complicated and intricate and, worst --- obscure. I could not and did not finish the book, sad to say. I'll donate it to my local library.

Pressfield is a wonderful writer and is at his best (Page 131, for example) in writing the dialogue of anger. He's really great at showing how vicious people can be toward each other. Some of the battle scenes are also first-rate, if too long and too detailed, and Pressfield does not shy away from gore and blood. I didn't mind that at all. I did mind being bored. The history was more interesting than the plot.

And just who was the main character? It actually was hard to tell. I don't believe that the novel was truly about Alcibiades. He remained a distant figure through most of the tale. However, the maps were good and helpful. Thank you for including them. The chronology of events in 5th Century B.C. was also helpful. The Glossary of Terms in the back of the book was necessary and very helpful. Now, how about a list or players, the characters, and their relation to one another? What a godsend that would have been!

Read "Gates of Fire," a far more compelling historical novel. This one just isn't very good, in my opinion, because it is impossible to read and maintain interest. For others, perhaps, but not for me.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Accurate, textured historical fiction that just failed to do it for me (a history teacher's review)
Comment: Before I get started let me say that I liked "The Legend of Bagger Vance" absolutely loved "Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae". Pressfield is a master of Greek battle scenes, especially from the point of view of the grunt footsoldier in the middle of their deadly scrums.

Pressfield's mastery of battlefield scenes happily continues in "Tides of War". His descriptions of the Athenian campaign against Syracuse was as good as anything in "Gates of Fire".

But, in between there was so much speech-making, reminiscing and quotes from Greek literature that I felt like I was having to slog through it all. On top of it all, the map of "Greece and the Aegean" in the front was insufficient, only listing some of the places mentioned in the book so that one had to guess where they were off to (or look them up in a seperate source).

The cover says it is "a novel of Alcibiades and the Peloponnesian War." That is not entirely accurate - I'd say it was just a novel of Alcibiades. If you know nothing of the Peloponnesian War before reading this book, you'll know precious little afterwards, except that there was a plague, a campaign against Syracuse in Sicily, Sparta won, Alcibiades switched sides and the Athenian legal system was fickle (to say the least).

A great companion book to go with this one would be A War Like No Other: How the Athenians and Spartans Fought the Peloponnesian War by Victor Davis Hanson. It explains the ships, armament and the Athenian plague in great detail. It lacks detail about Alcibiades so they dovetail together nicely.

In short:

While not without merit, this one was not as good as "Gates of Fire".

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Mr Pressfield did his homework
Comment: "Tides of War" by Steven Pressfield, ©2000

This historical novel is very good. Mr Pressfield did his homework to write this book. I am not schooled in the intricacies of ancient history, but you got the feeling that this was an accurate book. The speeches he recorded and the notions he has the characters express, to my understanding, seem like ones that would have been found back then.
It is to be noted that this story is set at the beginning of human understanding. The major philosophers had just begun to think the notions of what is beauty, or love, or government. In this book Alcibiades, expostulates on military tactics and leadership, on politicians, etc. Socrates does the same in other subjects. It is rather faithful to what the notions of life and living must have been, such as entertainment around the military campfire, or the debates in the Athenian or Spartan assemblies.
There is the juxtaposing of Sparta and Athens, Lysander and Alcibiades, that are two sides of the same coin. It puts the growth of human understanding out front: one thinks one way, the other thinks another. Because Sparta won the Peloponnesian War, it is necessary that the choices of culture and society of Sparta becomes the choices that win battles, but it must not be seen as the real reason for the winning of the war. This is a novel. What really happened in reality is lost in the past, even the reality of the Boer War is lost in the past and that is not much more than a hundred years old.
In the end there is a very good rendering of a Socratic argument on following the law. This is not taken as applicable in all instances, though it is spoken of as a good and true philosophy. It is only in retrospect that you realize that this has happened. As you read, you want the law to be thwarted, because it makes good sense in the story, but it does not hold true to the philosophy expounded by Socrates.

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Customer Rating:
Summary: Keeping the STORY in history
Comment: My take on this work of fiction is that it revealed another facet of the 'traitor' Alcibiades, the guy who fought for and against Athens, had more adventures than Indiana Jones could have ever imagined, and yet was portrayed, not as a cartoon, but as a very real and very complicated historical figure. Certainly this is not a work of scholarship but the research demanded of the novel was epic, in itself. The military locations, politics, and changing 'tides' of the course of history maintained an excellent linear perspective. The characters were fleshed out and, to the extent necessary in this work of fiction, historically accurate. The descriptions of the seaports, tools of the military, and hardships suffered on all side were well studied and presented in a very readable manner

Bottom line... You need to know Sophicles from Socrates and have a basic knowledge of the Peloponnesian war before you can wring you full monies-worth of enjoyment from this book. It requires patience to slog through the Greek names. That being said, once you finish this semi-fictional account of a very real historical person your appetite for more information will be whetted in a way you won't belive. After this book, then, move on to Donald Kagan's work THE PELOPONNESIAN WAR (see all my reviews if you like Greco-Roman history)

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