Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

This is not a good book. No matter what anyone else says or writes, or how well the book is selling, or how many good reviews it may receive in the media, it is not a good book. Tides of War is written at the same low "standards" set by the author's previous historical novel, Gates of Fire, which was also set in Classical Greece. It even has the same general pattern of inconsistencies from chapter to chapter and sometimes within single paragraphs, the same medically and physically impossible exploits on the battlefield, at least as many of anachronisms, and the same profanity rich, boring dialogue. It even exceeds Gates of Fire in distancing the reader from the central story by having perfectly remembered incidents and conversations passed on through at least three different storytellers, some of them relating events 30 to 60 years in the past. (Ancient Greeks are assumed to have had perfect memories, or know shorthand.) Anachronisms? What anachronisms? Well, the one that struck me most strongly was the existence of nautical charts at least eighteen hundred years before they were invented. (At least they aren't represented as "a drawn to scale blue print" like that map of Thermopolyae in Gates of Fire.) However, I was also disconcerted by the use of the term dreadnought to describe a Greek trireme (war ship), which was only slightly worse than than calling them by another 20th century term, battleships, throughout the rest of the book. Medically and physically impossible events? Well, there are several superhuman Greek soldiers in this book, just as in Gates of Fire. One could pick up and throw a 60-pound stone after being hamstrung and stabbed in the back twice, once through the liver. Also, there is that sailing by various Greek ships during fierce storms that would in truth have immediately destroyed any ship built in classical Greece. Inconsistencies? Well between pages 333 and 337 the reader has the dubious privilege of hearing the lecture addressed by a Spartan general to his own troops and the assembly of an allied city on the sources of Spartan strength, which boils down to "Courage...born of obedience." But on pages 338 to 341, literally on the same night as the speech, the Athenians attack the city and the Spartan general is unable to hold his own men in obedience, as they are spurred into an attack at great disadvantage to themselves by the insults of a 17 year old Persian prince. Didn't whoever proofread this book have a memory that worked over 5 pages? And by the way, at this battle the principal narrator, the man who is the original source for most of the events, is injured by "flaming turpentine" so that his "entire left side had been incinerated." As a result he "could not see nor feel of my face aught but charred meat." Not only does this horrible wound, which must have left remarkable scars, heal quickly, it is never mentioned by the man or any acquaintance of his later life, which lasts at least another decade. So what is the deal with this book, which is selling tremendously well, even before it has been reviewed by any major independent media sources? Well the battle scenes are dramatic. Everyone seems to like the way the author writes about combat. The longer the battles are, the more people dead and dying, and the more outrageously unbelievable the stamina of the participants, the better they sound. Apparently no reader bothers to stop in the middle and count up the number of hours of constant combat in heavy armor described, or the probable impact on the various characters of the wounds they have received. Also, there is the illusion of learning history. After all, this book is about the Peloponnesian War between Sparta and Athens isn't it? And the author does throw in all kinds of Greek words, Greek place names, and enough speeches by participants to make it seem like something literary must be going on. But I don't think that it is the dramatic battle scenes, or the speeches, or the illusion of historic events revealed which explain the success of this book. I think that it is the fact that the author has no sense of chronology, and so each page or section unfolds in its own context, and thus a sense of immediacy which readers like. For example, near the beginning of the book the narrator is on one ship out of a fleet of twenty-two which is sailing along the Greek coast while prevented from landing by a force of enemy cavalry. Since the twenty-two ships must have contained at least 2000 men, the cavalry must have numbered in the hundreds at least. Then, after a fierce storm, a dangerous forced beaching in a cove, followed by a dramatic - and completely impossible - escape to sea by two half-manned boats, the crews from those two boats, no more than 50 men, are sufficient to route the entire enemy force. Someone, in fact a lot of people, including the author, editor, and proof reader, must have been so involved in the navigation through the storm and the dramatic night battle afterwards, that they forgot how many cavalry there must have been before the storm. (Of course, the author never did give us a count....) By the way, I found the religious views of some of the characters in Tides of War interesting to say the least. Consider this quote from the end of the speech of the Spartan general mentioned in the fourth paragraph above: "We are the Almighty's right arm, God's holy agent, and no force between sea and sky may prevail against us." "...the Almighty's right arm"? "God's holy agent"? This sounds like something that might have been said by Elizabeth I of England or a leader of one of the Christian crusades, not something from a leader of a society whose religion had many Gods.