With many best sellers under his wing, Steven Pressfield prepares you for a journey unlike any other taking you back in time 2,300 years while giving you a little taste of what are forces in Iraq and Afghanistan are up against today. Based around Alexander the Great's campaign to rule the world, the novel is a first person memoir of a fictional character known as Matthias.
Starting off the first chapter with a bit from one of the end chapters, it doesn't build up the hype the way it should, but it does give you the kind of war they are fighting right from the get go. Put in the driver seat of a young eager male set about to prove himself and become a great hero, the experience throughout the book is riveting. Never before have I felt such agony with each obstacle of pain Matthias overcomes, along with pride over each accomplish. It becomes a coming of age story through hell, the trials, pursuits, escapades, and near death experiences make the war come to life in you hands. Even the way Alexander is described in the book makes you understand how much respect these men had for him.
Not only does this book bring to life the all to real war in the Middle East then and now but also explains the realities of war that are never looked at, and how even back then the soldiers kept the truth to themselves. The most intriguing factors are the beliefs that the Afghanistan people hold true to and the way they kept the most scared things in their life during the most intense times. Pressfield truly knows how to write a masterpiece. He brings three worlds together in this epic novel; the Afghans, Alexander's Men, and the reader himself. What I found truly enlightening were the Afghans beliefs; the Macedonia's way to mobilize such a huge army and keep track of so many people, as well as a behind the scene's view on a graphic war fought in the most unconventional of ways. Pressfield deserves the utmost of honor for this great novel, and gets a 5 out of 5 from me.
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