Gates Of Fire - Softcover

Pressfield, Steven

4.4

38,607 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0553812165 ISBN 13: 9780553812169

Publisher: Bantam, 2000

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Paperback. Pub Date: 2000 Pages: 525 Publisher: Bantam Acclaimed bestselling historical novel set in ancient Greece and culminating in the battle of Thermopylae.In 480 BC 200 Spartan warriors face the invading Persian Army a massive force reputed to number over one million men. Their orders are simple: delay the enemy for as long as possible while the main Greek armies mobilize. For six desperate days. the Spartans hold their position but in the final hours. their shields oken. their swords and spears shattered . they are overwhelmed. In the aftermath of this epic struggle a lone soldier is discovered. barely alive. and is ought to the King for interrogation. His name is Xeones: GATES OF FIRE is his extraordinary story where he paints a portrait of the Spartans . their way of life. of the men and the women who shaped our history books. An most extraordinary and utterly compe...

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Review:

Go tell the Spartans, stranger passing by, that here obedient to their laws we lie.

Thus reads an ancient stone at Thermopylae in northern Greece, the site of one of the world's greatest battles for freedom. Here, in 480 B.C., on a narrow mountain pass above the crystalline Aegean, 300 Spartan knights and their allies faced the massive forces of Xerxes, King of Persia. From the start, there was no question but that the Spartans would perish. In Gates of Fire, however, Steven Pressfield makes their courageous defence--and eventual extinction--unbearably suspenseful.

In the tradition of Mary Renault, this historical novel unfolds in flashback. Xeo, the sole Spartan survivor of Thermopylae, has been captured by the Persians, and Xerxes himself presses his young captive to reveal how his tiny cohort kept more than 100,000 Persians at bay for a week. Xeo, however, begins at the beginning, when his childhood home in northern Greece was overrun and he escaped to Sparta. There he is drafted into the elite Spartan guard and rigorously schooled in the art of war--an education brutal enough to destroy half the students, but (oddly enough) not without humour: "The more miserable the conditions, the more convulsing the jokes became, or at least that's how it seems," Xeo recalls. His companions in arms are Alexandros, a gentle boy who turns out to be the most courageous of all, and Rooster, an angry, half-Messenian youth.

Pressfield's descriptions of war are breathtaking in their immediacy. They are also meticulously assembled out of physical detail and crisp, uncluttered metaphor:

The forerank of the enemy collapsed immediately as the first shock hit it; the body-length shields seemed to implode rearward, their anchoring spikes rooted slinging from the earth like tent pins in a gale. The forerank archers were literally bowled off their feet, their wall-like shields caving in upon them like fortress redoubts under the assault of the ram.... The valour of the individual Medes was beyond question, but their light hacking blades were harmless as toys; against the massed wall of Spartan armour, they might as well have been defending themselves with reeds or fennel stalks.

Alas, even this human barrier was bound to collapse, as we knew all along it would. "War is work, not mystery," Xeo laments. But Pressfield's epic seems to make the opposite argument: courage on this scale is not merely inspiring but ultimately mysterious. --Marianne Painter, Amazon.com

Review:

"Breathtakingly brilliant... there have been many books about Sparta and its warrior code, but none have captured so magnificently the hearts, minds and spirits of the warriors who fought at Thermopylae. This is a work of rare genius. Savour it!" (DAVID GEMMELL)

"Incredibly gripping, moving and literate... rarely does an author manage to recreate a moment in history with such mastery, authority and psychological insight" (NELSON DeMILLE)

"Brings the battle of Thermopylae to brilliant life... he does for that war what Charles Frazier did for the Civil War in Cold Mountain. When you finish Pressfield's work, you will feel you have fought side by side with the Spartans. This novel is Homeric" (PAT CONROY)

"A tale worthy of Homer, a timeless epic of man and war, exquisitely researched and boldy written. Pressfield has created a new classic" (STEPHEN COONTS)

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