So,
after having read and reviewed book 1 of this trilogy, here I am now with book
2.
I gave book 1 a rather negative review, and my opinion hasn’t
changed. The writing style is incredibly
cheesy. (Perhaps this is the fault of
the translator, I don’t know.) And yet,
I enjoy historical fiction enough that I’ve stuck with this series anyway,
despite all its faults.
And
to give credit where credit is due, the books are at least readable. Sure, I may be rolling my eyes at how
incredibly bad the dialogue is, but it’s still a nice easy read, the prose is
clear and understandable, and the pages turn easily. And to a certain extent, as I’ve kept reading
this trilogy, I’ve even come to enjoy the pure cheesiness of it. I’ve gotten used to the style, and it now
longer bothers me when the characters talk in pure exposition dumps. It’s all part of the fun now.
Nevertheless,
I’ll quote a bit of the book here to illustrate exactly the type of cheesiness
that a potential reader can expect.
Below is an excerpt from pages 10-11.
Alexander is at the ancient city of Troy, where he is both over-awed by
being at the city of legend, and also at the same time enjoying
the charms of the beautiful young priestess employed there. After a swim:
They
came out of the water holding each other by the hand, and the King [Alexander]
led them closer to the dark mass of Achilles’s tomb. Alexander felt, or he believed he felt, the
spirit of the hero penetrate him and he thought he saw Briseis with her rosy
cheeks when he turned towards his companion, who was now standing before him in
the silver moonlight, searching for Alexander’s gaze in the darkness that
enveloped him.
“Only
the gods are allowed moments like this,” Alexander whispered to here and turned
towards the warm breeze that came from the sea.
“Here Achilles sat and cried for the death of Patroclus. Here his mother, the ocean nymph, deposited
his arms, weapons forged by a god.”
“So
do you believe in it after all,” the girl asked him.
“Yes.”
“So
why in the temple…”
“It’s
different here. It’s night and those
distant voices, long silenced, can still be heard. And you are resplendent here before
me—unveiled.”
“Are
you really a king?”
“Look
at me. Who do you see before you?”
“You
are the young man who sometimes appears in my dreams while I sleep with my
friends in the goddess’s sanctuary. The
young man I would have wanted to love.”
He
moved closer and held her head on his chest.
“I
will leave tomorrow, and in a few days’ time I will have to face a difficult
battle—perhaps I will be victorious, perhaps I will die.”
“In
that case, take me if you want me, take me here on this warm sand and let me
hold you in my arms, even if we will regret it later.” She kissed him long and passionately,
stroking his hair. “Moments like this
are reserved for the gods alone. But we
are gods, for as long as this night lasts.”
(p. 10-11)
And
yes, the whole book is written like that!
It’s pretty awful, but if you like historical fiction it is
readable enough.
The Portrait of Alexander
Having now read a real biography of
Alexander the Great (Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman), I now know a bit more about
these characters, and about what their final fates will ultimately be. For example, I now know that there was a
considerable amount of conflict within the Macedonian camp, and that Parmenion,
Philotas, Cleitus the Black, and Callisthenes will all eventually be killed by
Alexander. (Presumably this will happen
in the 3rd and final book of this trilogy.)
It
will be interesting to see how Manfredi gets around this in the final book,
because so far he’s built up absolutely no hints of what will happen. As Manfredi portrays it, Alexander’s
commanders and companions (including Parmenion, Philotas, Cleitus, and
Callisthenes) are all the best of friends with their king, and Alexander himself
is so generous and benevolent and fair that it seems impossible to believe he
would ever turn on his friends.
It
may have been better to build up hints of this dissension in the ranks in order
to make the 3rd act more understandable, because I’m currently
getting the feeling that it’s not going to make any sense when Alexander suddenly
turns on his friends and executes them.
But I suppose I’ll have to reserve judgment until I read the final book
and see how Manfredi handles this.
There
are at least some hints of Alexander’s temper in this book, but they are poorly
built into the narrative. For example,
on page 116, the book says: “Apelles anxiously watched the King’s reaction,
fearing that he might explode into one of his now famous rages.” But, the
problem with this is that this sentence appears out of nowhere. Nowhere previously in the narrative have we
ever gotten any hints of Alexander’s “now famous rages”, and nowhere
afterwards in the narrative do these rages manifest themselves. If Manfredi wanted to establish that
Alexander was prone to go off into fits of rage often (and apparently,
according to Philip Freeman, he really was), then Manfredi should have showed
that in his story, instead of just dropping this line in out of nowhere.
In
fact, Manfredi’s Alexander is the complete opposite of someone who flies into
fits of rages. In Manfredi’s book,
Alexander is understanding and forgiving to a fault. For instance, in Manfredi’s book, after a
surprise attack kills many Macedonian soldiers, the following exchange happens
between Alexander and the Macedonian commander at fault.
The
commander of the troops in service on the towers arrived, his head bowed, his
spirits low: “It was my fault. Punish me
if you will, but do not punish my men because they did what they could.”
“The
losses you have suffered are sufficient punishment for a commander,” replied
Alexander. “Now we must understand where
the mistake was made…” (p.
194)
Historical Accuracy
As I mentioned above, in between reading
book 1 and book 2 of this trilogy, I did actually read a real biography of
Alexander the Great by Philip Freeman, and am now somewhat better able to
separate fact from fiction.
In
broad sweeps the book seems to be pretty historically accurate, but there is
all sorts of little inaccuracies and nitpicks I’m now noticing.
As an
example of the nitpicky stuff, take the Battle of Granicus. Manfredi’s account of the battle reads like
this:
Alexander
spotted Spithridates off to the right, fighting furiously, his sword red with
blood, covered on the left by the giant Rheomithres, and he spurred his horse
in that direction. “Fight,
Barbarian! Fight against the King of
Macedon, if you have the mettle!”
Spithridates
spurred on his steed in his turn and let fly with his javelin. The point tore into the shoulder-piece of
Alexander’s breastplate, grazing the skin between his neck and his collarbone,
but the King unsheathed his sword and galloped at full tilt towards
Spithridates, crashing into him head on.
The satrap, knocked off balance by the shock of the impact, had to grab
wildly at his steed to avoid falling, exposing his flank in the process. Alexander wasted no time in sticking his
blade into his opponent’s armpit, but by this stage all the Persians were
homing in on him. An arrow brought his
horse to its knees and Alexander failed to duck in time to avoid Rheomithres’s
axe.
His
shield only managed to deflect the blow in part, so that it hit his helmet,
splitting the metal, cutting through the felt lining and reaching his
scalp. Alexander was on the ground now,
with his horse, and from the head wound the blood flowed copiously, covering
his face.
Rheomithres
raised the axe again, but [Cleitus]
the Black broke in at just that moment, shouting wildly and brandishing a
heavy Illyrian sword which cut clean through the barbarian’s arm with a single
blow.
Rheomithres
fell from his horse screaming and the blood spurted from the truncated limb,
taking his life even before Alexander, on his feet once more, delivered the
final blow. (p. 53-54)
So
that’s Manfredi’s version. In Philip
Freeman’s version, Alexander first attacks and kills a Persian nobleman named
Mithridates (who is absent from Manfredi’s version), not Spithridates. And then someone named Rhoesaces (not
Rheomithres) hits Alexander in the head with a sword (not an axe). But Alexander recovers and kills Rhoesaces by
himself. It is now Spithridates, in
Philip Freeman’s version, that comes up on Alexander from behind, and Cleitus
the Black cuts off the arm of Spithridates, not Rheomithres.
So,
those are the type of little nitpicky details that, if I were so inclined, I
could write about forever. I’m not so
inclined, and I’m not an expert anyway.
The best I could do is recommend Philip Freeman’s book to anyone
currently reading Manfredi’s Alexander trilogy, and you could take note of the
differences yourselves.
Aside
from little nitpicky details, there were two major things that stood out to me,
and both have to do with Manfredi’s white-washing the historical
Alexander. In the time period covered in
The Sands of Ammon, there are two major historical atrocities that
Alexander commits. One is the complete
destruction of the city of Tyre (W), and the other is Alexander’s
barbaric treatment of the eunuch Batis (W).
To
explain, or rather to explain away, why Alexander completely destroyed the
ancient Phoenician city of Tyre, Manfredi invents a story. Alexander’s old boyhood tutor Leonidas (W) comes out to see his old pupil on his campaigns. (In actual fact, it was Alexander’s other
boyhood tutor, Lysimachus (W), who visited Alexander during the
siege of Tyre, but Manfredi has conflated these two characters into one.)
In actual history, Lysimachus did almost
die from exposure in the mountains above Tyre (after he insisted on
accompanying his old student) but that was the end of the story. In Manfredi’s version, Leonidas (now a
composite character of Lysimachus and Leonidas) not only goes to the mountains above
Tyre, but also volunteers to be part of an embassy to negotiate a surrender
with the city of Tyre. The citizens of
Tyre instead violate the sanctity of the ambassadors, and crucify Alexander’s
old tutor. Thus, Alexander’s destruction
of the city of Tyre is now given more motivation.
None of this actually happened, of course,
but Manfredi’s version makes for a more likeable, or at least a more
understandable, Alexander than the historical king who slaughtered and sold
into slavery all the citizens of Tyre, and crucified 2,000 men of fighting age,
simply because he had been frustrated by the long siege.
As for Alexander’s treatment of the eunuch
Batis (who Alexander dragged behind him on his chariot until Batis died), in
Manfredi’s version this is because Alexander is under the influence of some
unnamed mysterious drug that his physician gives him to numb the pain from his
wounds, and he doesn’t realize what he is doing until he finally comes to
himself and it is too late—at which point he is filled with remorse for his
actions. Again, I’m fairly sure that’s
all made up, but it does make for a slightly more likeable protagonist than the
historical Alexander who committed the atrocity out of rage.
How much to forgive Manfredi for these
alterations is a decision left up to the individual reader, and to a large
extent depends on what you expect to get out of a historical fiction book. My own personal view is that in good
historical fiction, the writer should not contradict any established historical
fact. However, the writer is free to
invent extra details, provided they don’t contradict history. So in the case of Batis, for example, we
don’t have any indication that Alexander was delirious from any pain medication
at the time, but on the other hand we can’t possibly prove that he wasn’t
perhaps under the influence of some drug, and so the historical novelist is
free to add this detail if they want to try to paint a certain portrait of
Alexander. This is, after all, the whole
fun of historical fiction—imagining the extra details that the historical
accounts might have left out, and filling in the gaps.
In
the same way, in the sense that you can never rarely prove a negative, I
suppose we don’t have any proof that one of Alexander’s tutors wasn’t
crucified at Tyre. (Although it would be
strange for the ancient historians to have overlooked this detail). So maybe this added detail is also
forgivable? Maybe? I don’t know—like I said, all of this is a
personal judgment call on the part of the individual reader.
Other Notes
* There are also sins of omission in this book. For example, Philip Freeman reports some of
Alexander’s campaigns against some of the mountain tribes in Asia Minor (and
some of the massacres of their cities.)
But clearly Manfredi doesn’t have room to include everything in his
trilogy, so I’m inclined to forgive this as well.
* Related to the above point, at the end of this book
Alexander hasn’t even entered Persia yet.
So there’s an awful lot of stuff that still needs to happen, and only
one book in the trilogy left! It will be
interesting to see how Manfredi gets through all the remaining material in his
last book.
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