Amazon.co.uk Review
In historical fiction, the stakes are becoming ever higher. More and more first-rate novels in the genre appear monthly and aficionados can afford to pick and choose. Steven Pressfield has established some copper-bottomed credentials with the vigorously written epics
Gates of Fire and
Tides of War, and his new novel,
Last of the Amazons continues this winning streak. Pressfield's colourful, operatic style may not have the nuance of such progenitors of the genre as Robert Graves, but his populist approach really pays dividends--and without any sacrifice of quality writing. Popular does not have to mean crass, and Pressfield’s prose is lively and intelligent, always conjuring for the reader a brilliantly realised picture of the ancient world with maximum vividness.
Theseus is Pressfield's protagonist, and the year is 1250 BC; setting out on his dangerous odysseys, the celebrated Athenian monarch (best known for his combat with the monstrous Minotaur) has many close calls with death before taking a fateful decision: he marries the fierce Amazon queen Antiope. His action has disastrous consequences: the fearsome tribe of warrior women who spurn contact with men form a massive army and march to Athens to exact a bloody revenge. Their defeat, of course, was written in the stars, but for a remarkable period, their actions transfixed the Attic world before catastrophe overtook them.
Last of the Amazons has a whole slew of virtues, and it’s hard to know where to begin in detailing them. The characterisation, for instance: Theseus is realised with imagination and authority, and his mindset is a clever synthesis of modern and ancient consciousness. The politics, too, are cannily realised, as is the minutiae of everyday life in a much-mythologised era. But it’s the bloody action that, perhaps, most compels--this is not a book for the squeamish. Stick with the slightly artificial opening chapters, and you will find yourself swept up in a tale of truly epic proportions.--Barry Forshaw
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Review
Plutarch's Life of Theseus tells us that while on his voyages the great Athenian king and slayer of the Minotaur took for his bride the Amazon queen Antiope. The legendary tribe of fierce warrior women (who owed allegiance to no man) raised a vast army and marched on Athens, seeking revenge. They could not win, but for a brief and glorious moment they held the Attic world in thrall before vanishing into the immortal realms of myth and legend. In his most vividly atmospheric novel yet, peopled with flesh-and-blood heroes and heroines and ringing to the sound of brutal, bloody battles fought hand to hand, Pressfield brings the ancient world to pungent life as never before to recount the extraordinary, near-forgotten story of the last of the Amazons.
The myth of the formidable female warrior race is given credible and exciting life in this literary blood-and-thunder novel set in the time of ancient Greece. The Amazons despise the Greeks and were outraged when their queen Antiope fell in love with Theseus, the King of Athens, abandoning her tribe to be Theseus's wife. This terrible treachery had to be avenged and the women gathered together in a mighty female army led by Eleuthera, Antiope's lover and successor, to extract revenge. The book is full of battle: scenes of close combat, decapitations, the merciless killing of infants and women and, of course, complete contempt for male soldiers - so much so that it seems the culture of the Amazons is saturated in blood. But despite the gore, the novel is a compelling read. It has a loose structure, written from the viewpoints of the various characters and held together by the main narrator, Bones. Bones and her sister Europa, both from a noble Greek family, had a captured Amazonian governess, Selene. She fills them with enthusiasm for the Amazon way of life, and when Selene leaves Europa sneaks away in the night to follow her. Pressfield creates a believable world of viragos and the society they come from; how they take lovers in threes, how the children are reared, their attitude to love and death and their love for their horses. Their collective life is more important than the life of the individual - an Amazon always speak of herself as 'she', never 'I'. The book is busy with action and the savagery of hand-to-hand combat, but although some of it makes for gruesome reading, the narrative urges the reader on. Written with passion and great imagination, the novel roars away like a charging, yelling army into battle and sweeps the reader into the spirited world of a myth given new life. (Kirkus UK)
EDITORIAL - MARCH 1, 2002 (Kirkus Reviews)
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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