ISLE OF STONE review

[geo909]

FYI, a PW review of a new book by Nicholas Nicastro, whose Alexander novel EMPIRE OF ASHES was pretty unfairly trashed by certain individuals on this forum (...IMHO...)From Publishers Weekly Having brought John Paul Jones and Alexander the Great to life, Nicastro (Empire of Ashes) turns his formidable skills as a historical novelist on an obscure episode in the Peloponnesian War, that almost three-decade conflict between Athens and Sparta, which he labels antiquity's "war to end all wars." The choice to have a narrow focus, rather than an all-encompassing epic sweep, proves a wise one, as it enables Nicastro to go into nitty-gritty detail about the lifestyles of Greece in 425 B.C., making the harsh Spartan attitudes, for example, comprehensible, if not acceptable, to a modern sensibility. The author instills emotional depth in his three main characters GÇö Damatria, a wealthy Spartan woman, and her two sons, Antalcidas and Epitadas GÇö and the supporting cast through adept use of the telling descriptive phrase. The careful research and study that went into this book should enthrall fans of the classics, military history buffs and general readers. (Dec.)

[Efstathios]

That's interesting.I will have a glance at the book if i can find it.
I want to say something at this point.I have read many historical fiction nouvelles up to now and i have seen some things that i dont like.Of course a book like this is partly fiction,but when describing things that are historicaly known and recorded a writer should be more carefull. For example,many writers tend to show Spartans as a bloodthirsty tribe who pillaged and raped and killed anyone and everything.(Most accounts are for the Peloponnesian war).That is not historicaly correct.The Spartans were the ones that after the battles didnt loot any of the corpses of the fallen enemy sholdiers and respected them.To present them like being barbarians instead of Spartans is not fiction, it is massacre of history and since these books are historical nouvelles they shoud at least be more accurate. But i am used to the massacre of history by now.Nothing impresses me anymore.

[Demosthenes]

I have to say I disagree with the last post. Many writers, including ancient ones such as Xenophon, overly romanticized the virtue of the Spartans. If you look at their portrayal in the most famous modern book on this subject, Gates of Fire, you find an almost exaggeratedly chivalrous portrait of the Spartan state. In fact, the subjugation of the helots, who were fellow Greeks, was accomplished by terror tactics (such as use of secret police and autonomous "death squads")that would not be out of place in a modern totalitarian state. Considering that many of our ancient sources are biased toward the Spartans (because they tended to be anti-demos), we probably don't know half of the true story about how the Spartans operated.

[Efstathios]

Spartans was a very harsh tribe.But they had a code of honor.Their own code of honor.Yes,they may have had this secret police.And the teenagers may had been killing helots as a ritual to become adults.And they threw the handicaped babies to Keadas (the cave).Some of these things were true,some others maybe not.But the code of honor that they had prevented them from doing animalish things during battle.Like raping and pillaging villages.They used to set fire on farmhouses outside of Athens during the Peloponnesean war,but that's another thing. If anyone has more info about the matter (from sources) please kite them

[Demosthenes]

Maybe the best we can say is that the issue is complicated--the Spartans were not "barbarians", of course, but they weren't angels either. And a novel that reflects that complexity shouldn't be panned just because it reflects that complexity.