Customer Reviews

Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae

5 star:		(297)
4 star:		(72)
3 star:		(29)
2 star:		(16)
1 star:		(17)

 

 

Everybody dies. So did these 300 Greeks. But the world will never forget their choice of death.

It is incorrect that the battle at Thermopylae changed the course of history. That was the battle at Marathon, some years before, when the Greek cities were unprepared and only the city of Athens was able to scrape a small army of conscripts which, brilliantly generaled by Miltiadis, defeated the first Persian campaign and, thus, averted the infusion of Asia into Europe.

Thermopylae was mostly a moral victory. In every sense - as well in the sense that it demoralized the Persian troops. At the same time, it bought the rest of the Greeks the time needed to organize their naval forces at Salamis, where they crushed the great Persian forces only weeks later.

Pressfield does a fair job in making his readers get a taste of the Spartan way of life. The loyalty to the city-state; the devotion to the ideals of freedom; and the personal sacrifices offered to safeguard it.

Those who would try to extract modern lessons from this historic sacrifice against the Persians should probably keep in mind that other aspects of the Spartan society have been left untold: the oppression of the older tribes - hence the need for a militaristic elite; the dissolution of democracy in any city-state conquered and the establishment of a Spartan-controlled oligarchy; the skewed morality that allowed theft and cheating as long as the final goal was achieved - and the perpetrator never got caught.
Then again, maybe modern lessons can be extracted after all...

Not to be taken as a history lesson - yet, could be a great excuse to get interested in the period that shaped the western civilization.

HIGHLY RECOMMENDED!

If you liked the Movie "300" or even just the story, then you MUST READ THIS BOOK.
The movie was an extremely light version of TRUE HSTORICAL EVENTS that took place in ancient Greece, when a small army of Spartans and Greek alies took on an army of 2 million Persians!! (although some historians think it was closer to 200,000).
However, to get a REAL IN DEPTH look at this story (with lots of historical true details) through an extremely artful make-believe plot, you need to get this book! I don't ever read a book a second time. This is the first time i've ever done it!
You WON'T regret my suggestion!

That's where I come down on this novel. It's not high art, exactly. It's a bit over the top with it's heroic musculinity. Some of it's heroes are more noble ideals than actual people... BUT, it's still head and shoulders above the norm. Pressfield's careful writing and vivid descriptions elevates GATES OF FIRE to heights well above most novels set in the ancient world. So all I'm actually trying to do by writing review at all is suggest that while this novel didn't stagger me in the way great literature sometimes does, it did leave me impressed. And I think it will do the same for many readers interested in this sort of subject matter. I'd also recommend PRIDE OF CARTHAGE by David Durham, another fine novel of classical war.

Steven Pressfield has written a magnificent book that weaves a complex story of courage, duty, and obedience that has been an inspiration to soldiers and anyone who admires sacrifice for country and home. He places you in the minds of the warriors and does an excellent job of portraying the life of a Spartan, and other Greek City State soldiers during this time in history. I do think his description of the gore and slim of battle is a little far fetched but since there is no one alive that ever fought in one of these battles of antiquity his description is as good as anyone elses. The only reason I did not give the book five stars is because The Tides of War is vastly superior in scope and storytelling. However, Gates of Fire is a great read and a welcome addition to anyones library.

As a novel this book might be interesting, however, anyone who writes a book about the battle of Thermopylae and allows a picture of a Roman soldier on it's cover does not know what he is writing about.

Gates of fire is a great book. It tells you the life of spartans and it has its action moments. I am a kid and i read this book. It was a hard book but very interesting. There is some swearing in this book but that gives it alittle sparc.

It's always difficult to hold a readers attention with a story that has a foregone conclusion, but Steven Pressfield has done a superb job. This is the story of the ill fated battle at Thermopylae, but unlike some accounts of "The 300 Spartans" gives an insightful, and inventive view. The author has obviously poured over research on this subject, and was in fact just granted an honorary citizenship in the modern region of Greece, that was once known as Sparta, such is the authenticity of the narrative. Be prepared for a good read however, this is a very descriptive, and word heavy text, which although some may find hard work, I found to be essential to it's aim. The poetic and at times almost ancient translatory style of writing brings the story to life in a tangible way, which makes you feel like you can almost smell the sweat and toil during the battle scenes. Factually based fiction, can also sometime fall flat of a lack of creative licence, but again Mr Pressfield delivers wonderfully well. I won't give the story away, but the premise is the retelling of the battle from the eyes of an injured squire and lone survivor, along with his own intertwined and dramatic life march, then relayed to King Xerxes after the battle has concluded. I am new to Pressfield, but I am already a fan, and will be seeking out his other works. Highly recommended !

I'm not going to fill pages seeing as there are so many good reviews here already (and detailed at that) but I highly recommend this book to anyone who enjoys reading really... I have never read a book three times in a row (in a space of three weeks) and certainly not in so short a time, and each time I went back to read it I was still amazed, so I came to the conclusion that it really is the best book I have read, ever.

Even as a teenager, I enjoyed Beowulf, the Iliad, Agamemnon, etc. But for some reason when Gates of Fire was recommended to me I wasn't particularly excited about reading it. I noticed things in reviews that lauded its accuracy in describing the phalanx, its attempt at putting personalities behind the "legendary" names of 700 BC Greece, etc. Well, I admit it, I was an ignorant savage. My intuition was way off. WAY off.

Gates of Fire is one of my top 5 books of all time in my 36 years. That is no exaggeration (the top 5 thing, not my age). Seldom have I ever been so engrossed or thrilled. Maybe it's just me - I haven't read many of the other Gates of Fire reviews here - but the discipline, the toughness, the brutality, the determination, and the self-sacrifice of that hopeless fight against the Persians at Thermopylae is as awe-inspiring and adrenaline-pumping as any book I've ever read. Pressfield puts it in writing so well that I suspended my disbelief to the point of having visual memories of certain scenes in the book, like I had actually been there.

The phalanx is indeed described in great detail, by a participant. This is no six-foot-spear Homeric chariot-riding "and he fell, his armor clattering around him" kind of thing; this is a highly efficient, meat-grinder, muscle-straining form of warfare, perfectly suited to the terrain at hand.

The characters are somewhat archetypical but not overly so; it helps to defray the reader's attention to the more subtle plot elements, all of which flow like insignificant streams into the great river of doom that is the inevitable death of every defender there. This is a simple but highly effective compositional technique which I appreciated in retrospect.

Since Gates, I've read most of Pressfield's other books and came away slightly disappointed; I doubt he will ever be able to match the power and majesty of Gates of Fire.

This is a decent telling of the Battle of Thermopylae and of the Greek (and Spartan in particular) culture at the time. The narrator's is intermixed with that of his compatriots, particularly another slave and a Spartan citizen. Their lives exemplify the positives and negatives of the warrior culture of the Spartans. Unfortunately, the first half of the book slogs through. The second half, however, is much faster paced and has a thorough description of the heroic stand at the titular Gates of Fire. If you can make it to the halfway point, it's easily worth the time to finish.

My other main complaint is that the main character's wife and children aren't even a factor. We see no real interaction between them, and she never develops a face, much less a personality. For the book's purposes, he's single, but the plot or culture requires him to be married. To counter this, the author includes a long, though interesting, discussion of the nature of women's courage among Spartans and two strong female characters (both of which pop in and out of the story as needed).