Reading Notes

Decided to make a brief detour from the epic cycle stuff I've been covering. Agamemnon is a struggle...Let's go to something a bit later and cover Alexander's story. Mary Renault has been good to me before. The language of The Charioteer was near incomprehensible with its slang and multi-level conversations, but The Last of the Wine was a fine time.

I had read before starting that the portrayal of Alexander was rather glowing, and I can certainly see that. Generally wish I had not read anything as I prefer going in blind if possible. He does come across as a bit of an impossible figure. Something I don't think I would find as notable if this weren't about a real-life person. Like in Last of the Wine.

RIP Theban Sacred Band, we hardly knew ye...

Review

Mary Renault does good work. I love the style of her writing, sentences freely flow into one another as do events. We find ourselves flowing through Alexander's youth with months and years passing by at a time. I did get a little bit of Charioteer energy from this one where sometimes we're talking in code and some of the intrigue passes me by. But it's still quite fun and I liked going from the Homeric classics, to Last of the Wine, to here. Seeing the progression of Ancient Grecian society. I love that we call the Peloponessian War the "Great War". Y'all ain't seen nothing yet.

Will definitely have to read some of the other Alexander books she wrote at some point.