Title: Ruthless personal ambition
Product review: Where Pressfield's other Greek book, Gates of Fire, was about thoughtful devotion and total dedication, Tides of War is about boundless lust for power.Alcibiades, the novel's main object of study, never relents. He strives for more and more and takes it, until there's nothing left to take. Then his benefectors and followers realize something's wrong and Alcibiades must find another venue to plunder.He's very charming, but we the readers know better than the characters in the novel, and we never trust him or really like him.I couldn't figure out what Pressfield wanted to show with this novel. The message I got (ruthless ambition leading to disaster) seems trite. Alcibiades's continual rejoinder that he simply follows the goddess of Necessity, just doesn't jibe. Tides of War has none of the nobility that we find in Gates of FireStill, I give it one star for the writing, and one star for the period piece. Thucydides beckons.
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