Pressfield is hard to fault in this historical fiction centred around the Athenian general Alcibiades. If I have any criticism, it is of the format, where one narrator is written entirely in italics for pages at a time, and the reader must be constantly on guard to remember which narrator is at work, and to plow through the italicised text without giving up in despair. I was fortunate to have read Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War before reading Tides of War, and this work fills in many gaps, particularly those glossed over by Thucydides. Whether this is a result of Thucydides' not completing the history to the bitter end, where Alcibiades plays a more prominent role, I am not sure. Nevertheless, Pressfield's research is evident, and while he admits that the work is historical fiction and he has exercised literary licence to make the story work, his approach, much like in Gates of Fire, is as clever as being independently wealthy. There are many themes, ideas, philosophies, and sentiments weaved in and throughout the story that force one to think about democracy then and as we experience it today. It is hard not to draw parallels of the end of the Athenian Empire with the end of the American Empire I would argue we are witnessing today. That said, Pressfield has not written a political commentary, but rather a story about individuals and their actions against a backdrop of social and political turmoil. The reader can only hope that Alcibiades was as great as he is depicted by Pressfield, and take solace in the extent of his foibles so that it might give lesser mortals a sense of hope despite their own inadequacies. Is this better than Gates of Fire? I think his earlier novel reads better, but the lessons to be gleaned from Tides of War seem less-clichéd than the done-to-death exploits of the 300 at Thermopylae, and for this, I think, this work deserves the gong. While George Bernard Shaw's masterpiece was, for him and me, Back to Methuselah, Pygmalion will always be the popular standout. I think it is the same with these two great novels of historical fiction, but you could do worse than to read anything written by this author.

I may pick up this book again sometime. It doesn't seem bad. Rather, it's just very daunting. This book was one of the many we could pick off of a reading list for my college history class. The professor justified assigning this fictional story because it has a great amount of detail invested in what Greek culture, military and the experience of her people was like with incredible accuracy. And she's right. It's excellent in that regard.

What this book isn't for is the layman. It's incredible amount of detail does not explain itself. Nor does he provide enough information in his map, timeline and painfully brief layout of Greek history. The narrators of the story behave as people would. They do not stop to explain that Attica is the region controlled by Athens, or that Laconia is controlled by Sparta. They discuss it as any Greek might - already knowing these things. For a reader just coming in, with basic knowledge (or no knowledge of Greek history. They'll be lost in the sea of names from the get-go. Although there's plenty to just infer, I really hate thumbing back and forth from the glossary, to the maps, to the story to get my names and areas straight. It kills the flow of the read, although it is incredibly informative.

Once past the almost-confusing introduction, however, things seem to speed up and one can follow fairly easily. The book has good language from what I've seen, and seems well written, but I honestly cannot afford to take the time it deserves to go through this book. I might come back to this one, but for now, it'll take its place on the back of my book list.

Tides of War follows the tale of Polemides, an Athenian citizen and soldier serving in the Peloponnesian War, the titanic 27 year conflict between Athens and Sparta. Through happenstance, he also becomes one of the right hand men of Alcibiades, an Athenian noble bent on seeking glory, and notorious in history for having fought on every side in the very same war— serving Athens as a general, advising Sparta on their war strategy against Athens after his own exile, guiding the Persian involvement after being turned out of Sparta, and eventually retiring to lead hordes of independent Thracian tribes.

While the story is Polemides’, its ultimate infatuation is with Alcibiades. This is done well, as it maintains the mystique of such an enigmatic figure, making him both sympathetic and frustrating.

This books started slow for me, and it wasn’t until Polemides packed up to go on the doomed Sicilian Expedition that Pressfield’s writing really captured me. We get a first person view of the war, its atrocities, and its intense political intrigue. While this ended up being a perfect book for me, I would hesitate to recommend this to anyone who wasn’t already interested in the Peloponnesian War. There is so much going on, so many characters, and so many geographic locations that go by in such a blur that I think I would have been disoriented if I had not already been obsessively reading about this topic for the past two years.

Overall, a great book for the Greek history fan, but maybe a little too dense for those without a prerequisite interest.

Απαίσιο!
Εκνευριστηκώς βαρετό!
Καμία σχέση με τις "Πύλες της φωτιάς"...
Ο συγγραφέας νόμιζε πως βρήκε την κότα με τα χρυσά αυγά κι ακολουθεί μανιέρα, όμως δεν του έδεσε το γλυκό!

Steven Pressfield’s wildly successful 1998 novel, Gates of Fire—the basis for the movie 300 which tells the story of King Leonidas and the stand at the Gates of Thermopylae—was followed up three years later in 2001 with this equally gripping narrative. In Tides of War, which takes place two generations after Leonidas, we find another hero (and villain)—Alcibiades.

Alcibiades is a master of war, politics and love and was one of the greatest generals Athens ever produced, delivering victories for over three decades, however, his pride, arrogance, greed and ambition—despite following Socrates’ teachings to the letter—eventually got him cast out of favor. Putting aside his virtue and honor for Athens he takes up sides with his former enemies and thus he is both loved and hated, but never fully trusted by either side.

Narrated brilliantly by Alcibiades former bodyguard—and assassin—as told told to his grandson from death row, Tides of War is a page turner to the end despite its 500-page length!

Με 100 σελίδες λιγότερες θα ήταν πολύ καλύτερο.....

Outstanding view of Athens ability to destroy the best of themselves.

As a graduate student of ancient history (I dropped out to pursue writing) and as someone of Spartan descent, I was really eager to get into this book. Unfortunately, it kept putting me to sleep. While Pressfield is to be commended for his exhaustive research into Greek history and culture, somewhere along the line, I think he forgot to actually write an interesting story. The worst aspect of the book, however, is in the way Pressfield chose to tell, as a narration of a narration of another narration, bordering on a Spongebob joke (I asked my father about a man who once met another man who once knew this guy who ...). The plot also jumps all over the place, which to some extent is necessary in a biography (albeit fictionalized) encompassing the life of Alcibiades, but a little more focus on a singular event might have kept my attention. As is, I found it difficult to care about anything that was happening when the scenes kept changes so rapidly. Ironically, I read Kurt Vonnegut's "Slaughterhouse Five" after this one, a book that famously jumps all over the place in terms of time and place, but that somehow manages to keep the reader riveted. I guess it's all in the technique.

DNF @ 29%. Too boring and too jarring unfortunately, because the subject is totally in my Hist Fic wheelhouse: the story of Alcibiades, the greatest general of Athens during the Peloponnesian Wars.

The novel is structured as the memoir of Jason, a fictional character who interviewed Alcibiades' assassin from jail before he was executed. Now much older, Jason is retelling Polemides' story to his grandson. The narrative goes into long passages of philosophical dialogue about the nature of man, war, farming, etc., before suddenly shifting off topic...

Okay, I realize that a lot of ancient Historical Fiction mentions sex and often does so crudely, but the way Pressfield juxtaposes topics makes it feel particularly shocking. For example, I was reading a conversation between Alcibiades, Polemides and Socrates - yes, *that* Socrates - discussing the nature of dignity and degradation as these concepts apply to women. Suddenly the conversation jumped to young boys and girls, with vulgar descriptions of how soldiers passing through a village will use them up until they're husks - seriously, I think most people would get mental whiplash. Perhaps some nausea.

Beyond that, I was hoping the story would be from Alcibiades POV, not somebody else's perspective of him. I wanted to read how he experienced going to war as a teenager, and how a man who loved Athens as much as he did could change his allegiance to the enemy twice. That's not what I got. All in all, it's pretty easy to drop this novel and move onto something else.

Ένα βιβλίο για το Γιάννη από τους Απαράδεκτους που αναρωτιέται αν ειναι... Τουρκόσπορος!
Μέσα από την ιστορία του enfant prodige Αλκιβιάδη,βλέπουμε την εξυπνάδα,τη πονηριά,το θάρρος,το φιλότιμο,τη προδοσία,τη ζήλεια,τα πολιτικά τερτίπια,τα ψέμματα και τις δολοπλοκίες των αρχαίων Ελλήνων.
Είναι τόσο μα τόσο γνώριμα που επιβεβαιώνουν την ευγενική καταγωγή μας περαν πασης αμφιβολίας.

Το βιβλίο αν και μεγάλο σε όγκο δεν είναι καθόλου κουραστικό,οι περιγραφές μου φαίνονται ιστορικά αξιόπιστες,γενικά το απόλαυσα (ή απήλαυσα - λίγο αρχαΐζουσα δε βλάπτει)

The story of Alcibiades is as good as any for a historical novel, with momentous turning points that take us from ancient Athens to Sparta, out west to Sicily, and then northwest to the Hellespont, Thrace, and Persia beyond. Spartans eschewed money and empire, but worshipped obedience and discipline, producing an unsurpassed army; Athens grew an empire of immense wealth, but its people, the demos, proved tragically susceptible to fantasies of further grandeur and glory, pouring out treasure and hope on the Peloponnesian War, only to be crushed in the end by an alliance of Sparta and Persia. Alcibiades, at least in Pressfield ‘s book, plays an outsize role with his sexy good looks and tremendous personal charisma, his enormous vision for Athens and his tireless genius for raising and managing a military. One can’t help but compare this Alcibiades with Napoleon, both figures legend in their own times, even if they lost their wars.

Thanks to my colleague Troy for passing along this thick paperback, my companion on the long journey from Shenzhen to San Antonio to see my family. The high-falutin narrating voice of Jason was a drag at first, but I was firmly hooked by the first enormous battle scene, in chapter 11. Pressfield has a remarkable hand wit battle action, conveying the sweeping vista of ancient warfare, with hints at the individual experience of fighting and death and injury on this scale, every bit as satisfying as Game of Thrones. Beyond this, the book suffers a bit from some stiltedness of construction, it being mostly a mass of speeches and political intrigues, between its crescendo sequence of battles. I hope to turn back to Thucydides and Plato, with new eyes about what literary skills they possessed, what an incredible story this all was and remains, especially since the problems of democracy’s form, namely the fickleness of populism and the inability to apply the law objectively, are as important problems as they ever have been.

I struggled with the layering of the narrative and the general style of the writing. Some very graphic battle scenes were well done while others were summarized and left me wanting more. Honestly, I found it hard to follow the story and was disengaged throughout.