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Summary: Gates of Honor
Review: What an amazing read this book has been. I don't often read fictional accounts of war, but after seeing all the rave reviews here on Amazon, I had to order the book and it has been the most worthy time spent since I finished In Deadly Combat.This book is all about sacrifice, courage, cameraderie, and above all, honor. A mere three hundred men held back the invading millions for an entire week to stem the tide of the Persian advance before it started ravaging Greek cities. So many comparisons can be drawn to 19th and 20th Century warfare it is unreal. German's leaving rearguard detachments facing certain death against Russians in WWII to let civilians escape the Red Tide. Japanese during the Pacific campaign leaving her soldiers to be killed in defense of the Empire. Our great Marines at the Frozen Chosin. It is amazing. And the Spartan warriors, along with her allies, were the first to do this. An absolutely harrowing tale of a squire of the Spartan working-class who fought for freedom and democracy in its earliest stages. Shows you what it means to be a soldier even though most of us will never know the bonds forged in battle, and the selfless defense of one's country, no matter what nation you come from. Buy it.
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Summary: Extremely detailed and interesting story
Review: I want to preface my review by saying that to like a book like this, you need to like historical fiction, specifically greek/roman oriented stories, and you need to be able to appreciate a lot of historical detail, which can be very graphic at times. Now that I've said that, this books is extremely detailed in how it describes the Spartan army and its practices, and it is very detailed in how brutal the world was back then. There are instances of rape, widespread murder, and brutal carnage. Yet the story also includes very interesting descriptions of how the Spartan society functioned and interacted with other Greek city-states. Intermixed with these broad descriptions of the Greek world is the story of a young man who is orphaned and eventually finds his way to Sparta and into the service of the Spartan army. The story has a series of flashbacks that describe this boy's development into a man under the Spartan society while the story is moving ahead to the climatic battle of Thermopylae where the Spartan army, with a few other Greek armies, are attempting to slow a Persian advance into Greece to buy time for their countrymen to mobilize and organize a defense. The book is very well written with a great deal of broad and narrow views of several characters while also maintaining a good flow in terms of the main character and the build up to the actual battle. A very worthwhile buy.
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Summary: Definitely one of the best war novels ever written
Review: Gates of Fire is an extraordinary piece of literature by Pressfield. The novel captures the essence of life in 480 B.C. and the life and deaths of ancient greeks in the struggle against the Persians. The novel is so well written, you can close your eyes and see it happen and be almost 2,500 years in the past fighting with the Spartan Hoplites. I recommend this book to anyone, especially members of the military. If this book is ever made into a movie, it will win the oscar for best picture!
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Summary: War is Work
Review: So speaks Dienekes, with the mind of a general but who only wants to be a platoon commander, as his tale and the tales of others are interwoven in the tight Spartan military society that accepts no failures, only victory or death. There is something inspirational about that. You see snippets of that in Brady's The Coldest War about the Marines in Korea, as well as contemporary historical reports. We love it. When Xerxes sends an emissary to the Hot Gates to permit the remaining Spartans to live and asks for their shields, Leonidas, already mortally wounded says, "Come and get them." This is not unlike Colonel Puller at the Frozen Chosin Reservoir in Korea in 1950, who when told they were surrounded by 10 Divisions of the Communist Chinese, quipped "now we got 'em where we want 'em." We cheer. We applaud. It's Horatio at the Bridge; the 600 at Balaclava; the Brits at Roarke's Drift. Yet what we really have never established is the balance between that "all or nothing" society, and our contemporary life (for the most part in the USA) in a civilized society. We can't send men to die. We can send them to fight valiently and maybe die, but we can't send them to die. And, as the heroes of Vietnam learned, sometimes we take those innocents and villify them. So it's a great story. But it's real fiction for two reasons, one because it can't happen again and two, because we're not sure it really ever did happen. It does contain a great picture of life 24 centuries ago. A very worthwhile, compelling read. However, like the PG-13 caveat, it is very gory.
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Summary: Obedient to their laws
Review: Steven Pressfield brings to life the Klingons of ancient Greece in such remarkable detail that by the time the Spartans march to their heroic defeat at Thermopylae, the reader knows enough to berate a warrior who isn't holding his shield at the right height or has parted his hair on the wrong side. The three days of fighting at Thermopylae seem to take 72 hours to read, with every slash and spurt recorded. This is a very gory book. And yet, and yet... all these deaths are the loss of characters we have come to know. Narrator Xeones, the lone (fictional) survivor, clings to life just to name the men he fought beside in order that their sacrifice will not be forgotten. Very moving. And really, really gory.
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Summary: powerhouse novel about Sparta
Review: This is very good genre fiction. Pressfield uses narrative dialogue and characterization to make Sparta come alive. He shows Spartan brutality and their contempt for non Spartans in detail that is mostly acurrate but also gives full credit to their bravery and the noble role they played against Persian despotism.The battle sequences and the characterization of the Persians are especially well done. It isn't art but itis greatentertainment.
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Summary: Pressfiled does to Thermopylae what Homer does to Troy!
Review: This was an excellent and exciting book. Ones emotions really get stirred up. The book contains very descriptive battle scenes and has many sad moments. The book contains a lot of true historical facts well mixed with the fiction. The Spartan warrior code of ethics is the ideal that today's service men pay lip service to and try to emulate. After reading it you will want to one day make a pilgrimage to Thermopylae. Buy it today!
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Summary: A very good story from a soldiers view
Review: As a soldier in the US Military, I appriciate a story from the soldier's view, in the midst of battle.
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Summary: Stretches credibility, but has its occasional virtues
Review: "Gates of Fire" undoubtedly believes in its subject matter, which gives this account of the Spartans and their stand Thermopylae some vigor and sincerity, but I was troubled by the inconsistent narrative style (it veers between modern and a studied archaism that I found jarring and awkward) and the level of grotesque violence and language, which seems over the top to me. From my studies (intensive and spanning three decades), I don't think ancient Sparta was run as much like a casually sadistic, Zen Marine boot camp as the book depicts -- I can't imagine that such a setting would truly produce such a stable society or such superb soldiers and commanders as it did for so long, and it all seems too "modern" from my perspective. The odd addition of "Kung Fu"-like philosophizing (I almost expected the senior Spartan characters to start calling their proteges "Grasshopper" after
awhile) on top of this was also a bit strange. That said, the book does have a certain power and sweep; it's no "The Killer Angels" but its Thermopylae battle is among the most realistic and gripping yet committed to print. (This was read by Stephen Harrigan in his research for his far superior Alamo novel, "Gates of the Alamo", as a guide for how to make a doomed last stand engaging.) The author has obviously done a lot of study, even where I don't agree with his conclusions. An "okay" effort at best, but very contemporary, and I wouldn't be so quick to call it a classic as some. Others have noted a disturbing lack of conscience to this book (pro-war, silent on issues like Spartan slavery), and I echo these reservations.
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Summary: Sparta gets her day in the sun.
Review: The first thing you need to know about Pressfield is that he has read his Victor Davis Hanson, Donald Kagan and John Keegan. Indeed some of the battle descriptions come straight from the pages of these worthy writers. And Pressfield is very upfront about this debt. And the fact that he has done his research makes this novel worth reading almost in and of itself. For by rendering the views of these scholars into novelistic form, he makes available to the general public insights about how the Greeks lived and fought. He also owes a HUGE debt to Paul Cartledge -- whose book, "Spartan Reflections" I have to say I can not recommend to a non-specialist audience. Yes, Pressfield loves his Spartans. Almost to the exclusion, it would seem, of the rest of Greece. His portrait of deomcratic Athens is shocking -- a place you wouldn't really want to visit. But Sparta? What a great place (just ignore those helots over there). And here is the nub of what I have to say. You can dig and scour and revise history all you want, but at the end of the day, the Spartans were a militaristic, profoundly undemocratic society whose contributions to our culture are minimal. Pressfield, perhaps unconsciously (or consciously) aware of this seeks to at least accord the laurel to Sparta for SAVING that part of Greece, (Athens) which really WAS important to our cultural history. He has Leonidas say, "If we had withdrawn from these Gates today, brothers, no matter what prodigies of valour we had performed up till now, this battle would have been perceived as a defeat....If we had saved our skins today, one by one the separate cities would have caved in behind us, until the whole of Hellas had fallen." Okay, that's fine if it is just the pre-battle bombast from a leader of men about to die. But Pressfield follows it up with THIS remark: "The men listened soberly, knowing the king's assessment accurately reflected reality." Excuse me? Are we seriously to take the view that had Leonidas evacuated with his remnants that Themistocles and the Athenians would have shipped oars and packed it in? Pressfield seems to think so. And for those of you who agree, may I recommend, Peter Green's wonderful "The Greco-Persian Wars" - hopefully it will change your mind. The Spartans may have died for many things, honour being one of them, but the heroic last stand did not change history - it did not save Greece. What it DID do was add an absolutely extraordinary act of bravery to the annals of mankind - and it made a lot of widows and orphans in the process. Pressfield has a wonderful habit of using the origianl Greek - he peppers his prose with it. You'll be surprised at the origin of many well known English words. Enough has been written about the authenticity of the battle scenes. They are fantastic. But there is much, much more. There is a truly brilliant scene where a map of the world is shown to the Spartans by some Egyptian sailors. We forget. At this time in history people had very little idea of where the hell they were - or just how big the world was. Susan P. Mattern does a very nice job of communicating this in her book, "Rome and the Enemy". At times the dialogue and story-line are a bit hokey (the attack on the King's tent, for example - oh come on!!). And, yes, it sure does have the feel of a book ready-made for a screenpplay - but so what. It was a pot-boiler and putting the foregoing quibbles and his pro-Spartan bias to one side, I loved it.
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