Gates Of Fire

Originally, I read Steven Pressfield's strange book on golf The Legend of Bagger Vance and liked it quite a bit. It was a mystic tale of redemption through golf (a sport I find challenging, but enjoyable). I decided to delve in deeper to Pressfield's bibliography and found Gates of Fire. It deals with the depiction of the battle of Thermopylae through the eyes of a Greek slave who goes to war as a page to the warrior Dionekes. It is full of flashbacks and little side meanderings, but is really good at covering just about all aspects of ancient Greek life.

What You May Like About It:

There are some great parts of this book. One being a lesson in controlling fear within one's body. Dionekes teaches a student with a small switch from a tree by lightly tapping his face and seeing if the student will blink. He then talks about how our bodies betray us, always choosing self-preservation over what a person wants to do. It is in the Spartan code that Phobos (the Greek study for fear, a complete author fabrication that warriors would study this, but a great one) must be attained to become a true Spartan warrior. You must master fear over getting hurt, maimed, even killed. It brings a spiritual side to the Spartans that I had never seen.

The characters are well defined and fleshed out. Polyniekes is the Olympic athlete with no compassion for weakness until he examines himself in comparison with Dionekes. Why does everyone respect Dionekes over the physically superior Polyniekes, he constantly wonders (I will let you discover that for yourself)?

What You May Not Like:

Well, the main thing I can think of is that this is a war novel. Albeit, it is an ancient war novel, but there is a lot of testosterone between the cover of this book. Obviously there is more than just blood and guts, but many people may have their hands full with some of the descriptions of battle. It is not for the faint of heart.

The other detractor I found was the narrative suffers a little in the beginning, as if the author couldn't quite find his rhythm of letting you into this world. Don't lose hope after the first 50 pages or so is what I am basically saying. It is worth the effort.