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Steven Pressfield’s Gates of Fire Is Badass Historical Fiction

From Gates of Fire by Steven Pressfield:

For myself, I confess the horror of it  nearly overcame me. Though I had loaded up double with two packed quivers, twenty-four ironheads, the demands of fire had come so fierce and furious that I was down to nothing before I could spit. I was firing between the helmets of warriors, point-blank into the faces and throats of the foe. This was not archery, it was slaughter. I was pulling ironheads from the bowels of still-living men to reload and replenish my spent stock. The ash of a shaft drawn across my bow hand slipped from its notch, slimy with gore and tissue; warheads dripped blood before they were even fired. Overwhelmed by horror, my eyes clamped shut of their own will; I had to tear at my face with both hands to drive them open. Had I gone mad?

Wow, Gates of Fire rules. This is an awesome piece of historical fiction that retells the Battle of Thermopylae in 280 B.C. through the voice of the captive Xeones, a Spartan Helot, and recorded by the Persian historian, Gobartes, to King Xerxes. Pressfield does an amazing job of portraying the Spartans military valor and really gets deep into the warriors’ mindset. This is a really powerful book and I love the way the story is told. In between the ‘recorded words’ of Xeones are brief interludes from the Persian historian, who comes to care for their captured foe in the course of hearing his story. It’s interesting to me that Pressfield is also the man who wrote The Legend of Bagger Vance. Anyway, if you are interested at all in the Spartans, I suggest you toss your 300 DVD into the garbage and go read this. Not that I don’t love 300, actually it’s pretty sweet, but this book gets so deep it tugs at the heartstrings. Oh, and the battles are pretty nuts too. It rocks. Go get it now.