complicated cast of characters, challenging to keep track of in the first half of the book. Really great and moving ending, worth the investment.

Liked the other books by Steven Pressfield.

Marvelous, shaking story of brave women that defied all the rules of the ancient world. Spartans in a female form, training there entire life and dedicating it to friendship and love, tied with each other for life. Strong enough to match any man, living in a different world with only one rule: to live freely. An epic novel that portraits every days life, battles and relationships of the mysterious people - Amazon women.

I can hardly put it down. Striking imagery; marvelous words; compelling, believable story. No, it isn't an easy read. It's a deliberate read. The writer went to great lengths to paint pictures of these warriors and the world they were in. I loved the way you had opportunity to "see" the story from so may points of view, from the Greeks to the Amazons.

I started reading this book for research purposes. The characters in my books are strong females who carry swords and bows and join in battles. Did such women ever really exist? I've been on a mission to find out. I began with Adrienne Mayor's The Amazons: Lives and Legends of Warrior Women across the Ancient World which was a fantastic non-fiction book. Then I found this book.

It was so enjoyable - if you can call a tense book filled with drama enjoyable (which I do!). It made me feel like I was getting a glimpse into a powerful people of the past - now lost in time and only remembered in legend. I enjoyed the author's descriptive powers and how he made people with foreign names such as 'Glauke - Grey Eyes' come alive and stick in my brain! The story is told mostly from a narrator's point of view. It does jump and switch pov's but this didn't bother me at all, I could follow it easily. One thing that amazed me was that there is a big chunk of backstory and it added so much to the tale. As the book ended I felt a sense of sorrow and loss.

I would definitely recommend it for historical fiction lovers and people who would like to find out more about powerful female warriors of the past.

O livro descreve detalhadamente aquilo que é a percepção de uma cultura utilizando uma historia simples como base condutora. Não deslumbrou mas foi uma leitura interessante.

An astounding and unique view of women, from a distant epoch.

A lovely book about mythical people and I'm a sucker for women warrior stories, but the writing was a little too wordy and overcomplicated for me. Glad I read it, but not my favorite book in the world

A long time favorite of mine.

I wasn’t sure what to expect from this book since Bronze Age Greece tends to get very little coverage outside of the Trojan War and some of its related heroes. From the title I didn’t even realize it was about Theseus, who, pretty much alone among non-Homeric Greek heroes (where’re our Seven Against Thebes novels? Or Jason? Or even Heracles, who shows up all the time on film?) has actually had an excellent appearance in Mary Renault’s n  The King Must Dien and The Bull from the Sea. Fortunately, I’m a sucker for “truth behind the myth” stories, when done right. And this one does very right indeed.

The Amazons are clearly the highlight here. And that's a good thing since Amazons in fiction tend to be pretty mediocre. They serve as the prototype for generic warrior-women but also for liberated feminists. These ideals can be cool, but tend to produce bland caricatures since the goal in both cases is to produce inspiring rather than interesting characters, another way of saying that they’re prone to Mary Sue-isms. But these Amazons (or rather, the tal Kyrte) are utterly terrifying. Our introduction to them in combat plays out like a horror film as a terrified warband tries desperately to escape from a single Amazon warrior in a cave. They live for combat and brutally murder those who get in their way (men, women, and children). They take trophies from their kills as a matter of course. There’s little that is sexy about these Amazons, but much that is awesome.

They’re warrior women obviously (how could they be Amazons otherwise?) but this is only a small part of their culture. Their main characteristics are those of steppe nomads, of which a large number of elements have been merged. The Amazons hate civilization, they view even language as an unfortunate necessity. Actions are what matter, not words. The whole female exclusivity is treated much like the Theban promotion of homosexual bonds in the Sacred Band. Paired (or in this case tripartite) lovers will fight harder for their comrades. And the exclusively female nature of these elite warriors is justified by the recognition that the presence of family units would weaken the ties upon which their society relies: the regimented sisterhood and elevation of tribe above family. Martial bonds must trump marital ones. These Amazons are brave, fearsome, sometimes noble, and often terrifying and abhorrent. But above all they are believable.

The Athenians, on the other hand, are rather less impressive. They don’t feel very Greek and they feel even less Mycenaean. Athens is much like the Classical city: tens of thousands strong, one of the most important cities in Greece, and with all the democratic features in place already (including the Assembly on the Pnyx), despite the presence of a king. Theseus is far too noble. The romantic portrayal amuses me as the mythic Theseus is notorious for using and abandoning women. Ariadne saved him from the Labyrinth and helped him overthrow her father, yet as soon as she was of no further use he dumped her on an island and sailed off home to seize his throne. In at least one version of the tale, Theseus abandons Antiope as well, in favor of a better-connected bride, thus precipitating the Amazon invasion. Here he’s basically Pericles, a leader of free citizens and something of a romantic.

A big part of why this book succeeds is that it ties in the confrontation between the Amazons and Greeks into the broader conflict between settled (ie. civilized) peoples and the nomadic steppe tribes. The Amazons represent freedom, always a compelling goal for the Greeks. They are free from male domination, free from the control of rival kings, free from the constraints of jobs and cramped buildings and compromise. And they do not have to scar Mother Earth to live. Athens represents a different sort of freedom: the freedom to live lives free from the threat of death, the freedom to focus on skills other than war, the freedom to innovate... These views of freedom are incapable of coexisting. One must die, yet whichever is defeated the loss cannot be anything other than sad.

The central premise is, indeed, somewhat flawed. This was not the end of the steppe people. Aside from the not-too-distant future which would see the death of Cyrus the Great at the hands of the Scythians, we’ve got the conquests of Atilla the Hun and Genghis Khan (still the largest land-based empire in history) millennia in the future. But I can accept that for some of the regions (Thrace and northern Anatolia for example) the nomadic lifestyle was gradually dying out. It’s also rather too on-the-nose, as a everyone the great Amazon army passes seems to recognize that this broader conflict is inevitable. But I can’t deny that it’s a compelling idea. And the different viewpoints are very well established.

The story itself, alas, suffers from a certain level of confusion. If you read only the first three books you’d be forgiven for thinking that the story is about the quest to avenge the murder of a string of men by an Amazon hostage. You can think nothing else, for there’s not even a hint that there will be anything more to the story. But then you hit book four (of twelve) and suddenly we’re in flashback territory and hearing the account of Theseus’ struggle with the Amazons and their invasion of Attika. And this consumes the majority of the story.

Don’t mistake me: I like this story better than the initial one. That story was far too limited and even a little undermotivated (send four whole ships on a voyage to modern Russia to avenge the death of a few farmhands?) while Theseus’ story is a grand romance of adventure and revenge and an epic clash of cultures. But it shouldn’t take us until we’re a quarter of the way into the book to begin the main plot. I was also a little underwhelmed by the central love story. Theseus and Antiope seem to fall in love about as quickly as Romeo and Juliet, and given the strong wills demonstrated by both these characters it seems unlikely. At the least we’re given little justification for it, especially since it occurs before they even first talk to each other. And it doesn’t help that this romance is told entirely by outside viewers who never discuss the issue with either of the two lovers. As a result, what we see is as inexplicable and unmotivated as in the original myths. And the less said about the rather rambling and uninspired ending the better.

Still, while these are definitely faults they in no way subtract from the book’s real achievements. The combat scenes are utterly captivating. Often I’ve heard claims that a certain novel makes it feel as if you are truly there, but I’ve never seen it come to life as skillfully as this. We’re gifted with a great variety of such battles as well: from small melees in enclosed areas to steppe warfare to sieges to a battle on the plains beneath Athens. The look and feel of steppe life is vividly drawn here, as is the alien mentality of its inhabitants. And they all feel a part of the world in which Greece exists, not always a given when speaking of books depicting culture clashes. And best of all the conflict with the Amazons perfectly balances tragedy with a sense of necessity. It is sad to witness the end of a whole way of life, but at the same time the ideals of civilization are our ideals. That absolute freedom must be compromised to create true justice and peace among men is something we all accept but the Amazons never can. And so it is with sadness but determination that we must witness their passing.

Usually I really like Steven Pressfield novels, but I found this one to be less than stellar. The plot took too long to develop, and I often felt like I needed to take a nap.

I read Pressfield’s Gates of Fire maybe 25 years ago and thought it was great. And then Tides of War and The Virtues of War were both pretty good. I bought this book shortly after completing those and it has been collecting dust for about twenty years.

Pressfield again utilizes a rather convoluted storytelling style with multiple perspectives and nested timelines, but overall he delivers a solid action-packed tale. One of the things I enjoyed about his other books was that I felt I learned some interesting history about ancient Greece and the technology of war in that era. In contrast, this time I felt I was mostly learning some snippets of mythology which have been stretched and altered enough that I’m unable to tell how much is truly canon—or if there is even such a thing for Greek mythology.

An excellent audio book with fitting voices.

The story of the Amazons is told with such authority it feels like authentic history. This is how the f
Free Women lived and it is something to aspire to - even if it is sometimes brutal.

It feels like living history that has something to tell us today.