I’ve always had trouble with Steven Pressfield. I find his work enthralling, vivid, startling in its clarity, use of metaphor and depth but at times completely lacking in coherence. The Legend of Bagger Vance was awlful American sentimentalism. Gates of Fire just lost me, halfway through the novel, though enjoying his depictions of battle and Spartan life I had no idea of anyone was and didn’t really care. Last of the Amazons is much better, despite the unimaginative title.
Told in the first person by four of the main characters, the narrative jumping between them, the plot kind of beginning at the end and then working back on itself through their recollections.
As with Gates of Fire the novel is about conflict. The clash of idealogies between the female world of the Amazon and the male world of the Greek. Nomadic verses Urban. Herding verses farming. As well as the more universial conflicts of human society; children against their parents, resistance against change, fear of death or dishonour. Many types of conflict are brought against the walls of Athens.
Pressfields descriptions of that Seige of Athens are so enthralling you can almost smell the brick dust and the burning. The Massacre at the Parched Hills is one of the finest battle scenes I have ever read, unmatched for its brutality, its scope and a sense that this is not just fiction, you feel like an eyewitness to the horror. A good read.
Rating: 3 / 5

To garner sympathy to those whose civilisation that embraces savagery of an extremity and uncompromising nature is a testament to the sheer power of Stephen Pressfield’s writing. You’ll be cheering the destruction of Athens, in spite of the fact that you know it’s the wrong thing to do. In Queen Antiope and rival, Eleuthera, Pressfield has created 2 heroines who rival Xeo, Leonidas, et al in a tragic destiny. That’s not to say that men are belittled.

The final message regarding the wild, natural heart of women (i.e. their unrivalled potential to inspire love and hate with a passion) is thought provoking and eternal.

A feminist novel? Yes. A balanced, insightful look into human illogicality? Oh yes. A rollicking, unpredictable, shocking blockbuster of an all time page turner? Absolutely.
Rating: 5 / 5

This is not a masterpiece like GATES OF FIRE but it is still a remarkable and beautiful work. His reimagination of the nomadic warrior race of women warriors is a magnificent achievement and the story finally rises to genuine tragedy. As always Pressfield shows a remarkable sympathy for preChristian religions as genuine religions. My only reservations are that I couldn`t really accept the idea of Theseus the 12th century BC Democrat [though to be fair his fate does indeed come to resemble that of most of the great historical Atehenian democrats] and occasionally the Amazons` account of their world view betrays a bit too much reading of Heidegger. Well worth reading all the same.
Rating: 4 / 5

I count ‘Gates of Fire’ as one of my all time favourite books, so not sure why I waited quite so long to read another Pressfield.

Pressfield stands apart from ‘historical’ writers such as Iggulden and Kane. He is a lot more sophisticated and cultured in his writing style.

This book is particularly ambitious taking the Amazons from Greek mythology and bringing them to life. Pressfield’s challenge is then to create warrior women who are more than the equal of men in battle, believable. He does this by making them master horse warriors, creating for them a complex culture and belief system which largely excludes men.

The story is a gory and brutal one, and for all Pressfields sophistication and complexity, was even for this seasoned ‘hack and slash’ consumer, hard to read at times. The Amazons are on the war path after their Queen falls for and is carried off by the Athenian King and head up a Barbarian hoard that beseige the famous city. Pressfield broadens the themes and makes it more a clash of belief systems, with the free and wild tribes trying to remove the stone dwelling ‘farmers’ and ‘pirates’ they see as a threat to their way of life.

This part of the story is compelling and the seige of of Athens is a fantastic peice of drama that is on a par with any description of warfare I’ve ever read.

There were a couple of negatives for me. The main being that this, the largest part of the story, is told in ‘flashback’ by several of the lead protagonist’s, as they take part in a secondary adventure to retrieve a couple of runaway daughters who have left Athens to jion the Amazons.

This meant that the outcome of the battle is known to us in advance of the telling, but also that the conclusion of the secondary tale makes for the end and climax of the book. Which is, as Pressfield always seems to be, moving and tragic, but I just felt the real story ended with the conclusion of the seige, giving the book a slightly anticlimatic feel.

Other than this I did find some of the great detail the author goes into on the belief systems of the Amazon’s a little tiresome at times.

But Pressfield is a genuis and has a rare gift for describing battle and war, illustrating both it’s horrors and heroism and taking the reader into the terrifying heart of the action.
Rating: 4 / 5

Very good fiction history, Pressfield recreates the Amazons and their struggle with the Athenians. This book is a bit harder to get into than Gates of fire with Pressfiled jumping between narrators very quickly, but it is ultimately worth it. Pressfield does seem to have fallen in love with his subject matter, but this is a good addition to any keen reader of historical fiction/history.
Rating: 4 / 5

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