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This was an interesting book. I wasn’t sure what to expect from it and had thought it would be a book of history, but was actually a work of historical fiction. It was well told and, from what I know, an accurate enough telling of the story of the 300. Herodotus also tells this story in his histories and it is hardly surprising that a tale of so few holding off an army of so many should be remembered as one of the great military stories of all time. This one is told through the eyes of a captured assistant to the Spartans who is asked by the Persian king to tell his story and who does so in quite some depth and detail.

The odd thing was that this story is told really by an historian of the Persians, and normally this would, within the context of the novel, raise concerns over the accuracy of the story as told and translated from the Greek and into Persian for the king. I guess I’m too aware of concerns for such distortions as this wasn’t something that was really played with at all by the author. The convoluted process involved in the telling of the story was not really to get the reader to question the accuracy of what was being told, but rather to find a way to get many of the threads in the story to all line up.

This book is apparently taught at West Point and I found that very interesting. This is a story about bravery and what it takes to be brave, and I guess that is exactly the sort of thing people in the army would expect to learn. I couldn’t help reflect while reading this book how often when America is involved in military adventures overseas they are much more likely to see themselves as the 300, and therefore acting to defend their homeland, rather than as the Persian invaders. This is interesting, as it does involve some fascinating mental gymnastics.

This is a remarkable story and well told here in a way a modern audience would be much more likely to enjoy. Many of the famous lines are all here, from fighting in the shade (due to the number of arrows the Persians would be able to fire) to telling the emissary of the Persians 'to come and get them' referring to the Greek weapons after being asked to hand them over. Boy’s own stuff this. I kept thinking that it was odd that it was mostly told in first person, as generally these stories are told in omniscient narration, and this made me think that perhaps modern tellings of stories like this are much more likely to be told through the eyes of an individual.

Anyway, I enjoyed this more than I thought I might.