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Stan's Reviews > Gates of Fire
Gates of Fire
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Highly recommended to me, but highly disappointing. This is a romanticized historical fictional account of the Spartans' stand at Thermopylae against the massively superior forces of Xerxes. It does offer a depiction of the warrior culture of Sparta. But the writing: trite, tedious, melodramatic, sometimes overly flowery faux archaic, and at others base sixth grade genital/excrement humor. One of the major humor touchstones was a character whose catchphrase was "Wake up to this", which cracked everyone up because it sounded like "Weck up to thees". Not only is that not that funny, but it doesn't really work for me because it takes me away from picturing these guys speaking Greek, and becomes a comedy of guys talking in amusingly accented English like Cheech and Chong. I'll allow a star for the research the author did for the background for the book.
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Finished Reading
February 15, 2010
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Nicolas
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Aug 12, 2014 12:46PM
I really enjoyed both this book and Tides of War, but I must say that I completely agree with you on Pressfield's tendency to occasionally complicate his writing with cumbersome vocabulary in one paragraph, only to use the word A--hole for the thirty-seventh time in the next paragraph while telling some juvenile "joke." It is a confusing aspect (duality) of his work.
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Stan, I just finished this book and gave it 2 stars. I can't argue against any of your points. Tedious and flowery faux archaic are good descriptions. Take a look at my review, which I just posted, for my other complaints against this novel.
I feel you have presented that scene massively out of context, and it's a shame that out of all of the brilliance, sincerity and heart in the book, that it what remains with you.
I get your point, but as a former student of Ancient Greek I was in awe of how much the style of this book resembled that of ancient greek textes. Archaic? Yes, may be, but I think that was the point of having an ancient greek speaking. That’s not to say everybody should like it � I probably liked it in part because I’m used to this kind of prose and I appreciated the nod to classical literature � just that there is a reason behind it.
