book has been sitting on my shelf since January, I randomly found it in Dymocks and it sounded right up my alley so I bought it! However, the reviews I've seen have been pretty bad and a lot of people didn't enjoy this book so I was pretty nervous going into it.
I really shouldn't have waited so long to read this book since it was actually pretty great,
My mum and I are huge history buffs especially ancient history, My mum studied Alexander the Great a lot when she was my age and she always insisted that I learn about him, I actually have hardly any knowledge on him though since I never studied him when I was in high school I stuck to all the fucked up evil guys for my assignments because they were more interesting.
I saw that this book was meant to be loosely based on his story and that made me so pumped to read it, I can't tell you if any of the information in here is anyways accurate, but I can tell you that's a quality book,
I saw a lot of people say that there are a lot of POV's and it gets a bit much sometimes and I suppose I agree.
I feel like a lot of people had a lot of different stories going and it was a hard to keep up and b i felt like some stories just weren't going anywhere fast.
For example I was intrigued by Zo's POV but she only got a few chapters and her story stopped suddenly while most of the other characters kinda finished their story for this book.
I actually liked all the characters though so I can't complain on that,
Overall this was just a pretty great book, I really liked it and hopefully I'll pick up the next one shortly Honestly, fuck this book and fuck its historical inaccuracies,
Warning: This is basically me being all annoyed and comparing how the book made shit up to actual historical truths,
. Historical Alexander was hella gay so often it was ridiculous to the point that sometimes I need to set down whatever material I was reading on him and just gape.
I mean, a he kissed a boy and he liked it, to misquote Katy Perry,
So there was a dance that Bagoas performed that was apparently so damn fine he agreed to kiss him in front of everyone his soldiers weren't that much of a help, they were all like 'pls go get a piece of dat ass'
b Him and Hephaestion
Aside from how he compared themselves as Achilles and Patroclus respectively which fyi people at that time were already debating if the latter two were bangin' in the Iliad or not, they decided it was cool to go visit their graves and run naked after rubbing oil all over each other on a beach.
Then there is the infamous "He too is Alexander" quote after a queen accidentally mistook Hephaestion for Alexander,
Oh yeah, also the philosopher Diogenes this man is the ultimate sass master btw sent a letter that was basically "dude man up stop yielding to Hephaestion's thighs" could you even believe
"Without me, you would be nothing"
OR PERSEPOLIS THIS FUCKER GAVE HEPHAESTION A.
BILLION POUND FUNERAL I SHIT YOU NOT
Yeah this is way too long just to make a point but you get
So when the novel erases this side of him and makes A straighter than a ruler it just makes me so pissed.
Because He is no longer Alexander And I don't care that it's fiction or fantasy because what is the point of saying that he is Alexander the Great when you change him to fit into a typical heterosexual YA male protagonist
.
Also let me be clear that this sympathetic Alexander bullshit in the novel is/true,
He is, for a lack of better word, a dickhead to everybody aside from Hephaestion and others currently in favour but v, rare. Like he was really shit on how he treated his men he sent his army on a death march though Gedrosia where supposedly three quarters died in the desert, on purpose, for Christ's sake.
He gave exactly zero fucks on planning or governing or economics or even common sense, Guess what he did to get rid of Macedonia's debt and to finance his army Oh just casually starting a war with the possibly most powerful empire that existed on earth bc why not And the thing was that it actually worked
Like.
Yeah. Who the hell is so obsessed with his own success that he can actually pull of this sort of thing
So this Alexander who does not deserve 'the Great' in this novel is absolutely foreign to me.
He named a city after himself when he wasfor fuck's sake,
. The first chapter, which the lovely sitelinkEmily May clearly compares it to The Hunger Games so I'll just skip that,
However, just some stuff to add: The Blood Tournament happening in an arena,
The Blood Tournament is a single freeforall held in a large arena with a simulated landscape made to increase difficulty, featuring added natural challenges like quicksand or cliffs.
It is hot, bloody, and chaotic, with fighting taking place all over the stadium until the crowdand the kingapprove a single victor,
Correct me if I am wrong, but I amsure arenas didn't exist in Greece, Hell, the idea of the gladiator games, where people fought with weapons with one another didn't exist until several hundred years later where the Romans popularised it and brought it over and even then it didn't really catch on the Greeks decided that they were too cultured to consider bloodshed as entertainment.
I don't even want to talk about how the everloving fuck was the quicksand transported into the arena,
Anyway, the very existence of the Tournament is to me rather unbelievable, If you were King, how would you choose your elite unit of warriors
Soldiers that had already served in your army for years for you to observe their quality, skill and obedience or people like seventeen year old boys, "Olympic athletes, professional wrestlers, and soldiers” that are just going to battle it out and be chosen if they win Historically, Phillip agrees with me that the Hypaspists should be a position awarded based on sitelinkmerit, but for plot's sake why not suspend common sense.
. I don't know much about names, but sitelinkLucy makes an interesting point that a character Jacob has a Hebrew name, It's the small things that nags me so much, because even though I may have not recognised the flaw I had placed my trust in the author, expecting that they took time to do their research.
SHIT I FORGOT
Okay
So in ChapterJacob was all "Kat bby I love you wait for me to come home so I can marry you" AND THEY ARE ONE YEAR APART WHICH IS IMPOSSIBLE
BECAUSE MEN MARRIED WHEN THEY WEREAND THE WOMEN USUALLY HALF OF THAT
SO LIKE
I AM SO PISSED AT MYSELF FOR NOT REMEMBERING THIS SOONER
BUT SERIOUSLY
DID THE AUTHOR DO NO RESEARCH
UGH
I'M NOT EVEN GOING TO TALK ABOUT PEDERASTY AND SHIT BECAUSE OKAY YOU MAY ARGUE THAT ONLY POSH CITY PEOPLE DID IT BUT I'M PRETTY SURE EVEN IN VILLAGES MARRIAGE CUSTOMS ARE THE SAME
ZERO FUCKING STARS
written before I read the damn book
The author is also a historian, so I'm not too afraid she'll spectacularly ruin the portrayal of one of the most famous and one of my favourite!! person in history.
Note: I've never heard of Zofia btw
Damn, the history nerd in me is so happy, An utterly spellbinding and fascinating mix of magic and history,
Epic in every sense of the word,
From the first time I read the synopsis, I knew this was the kind of book I would devour, Appealing to both my love of history and my love of fantasy, bestselling author Eleanor Herman delivers a fascinating and gripping story with her YA fantasy debut.
Known for her historical novels, Herman imbues that same richness and depth in Legacy of Kings, as is evidenced by not only her world building, but also her nuanced and complex characters.
Imparted primarily by six distinctive point of views, she weaves a tale where empires begin to rise to power, where magic and myth stir amidst evil and deception.
We meet sixteenyearold Alexander Alex, heir to the throne of Macedonia, who dreams
of taking his rightful place as an unstoppable leader, irrespective of his father, King Philip II.
“He has other plans, plans his father doesnt know about, And if he succeeds, hell be the greatest leader this world has ever known, ”
Along with his best friend and confidante, Hephaestion Heph, Alex devises a plan to fulfill his fate, but when their plan goes awry in the Blood Tournament, everything changes.
Then Alex meets Katerina Kat, an orphan from Erissa, and an unexpected and unexplainable connection forges between them, complicating the mission Kat is determined to accomplish.
Kat is in Pella, the kingdom of Macedon, to infiltrate the palace and right the wrongs of her past, beginning with Alexs maliciously shrewd mother, Queen Olympias.
Shes also there to watch over the boy she loves, Jacob, who bests Heph in the tournament, but gets entangled with the mysterious, deceptive and powerful Aeserian Lords.
Meanwhile, we also come across the Persian Princess Zofia Zo, who runs from her destiny in search of the man she truly loves to escape her betrothal to Alex, whom shes never met.
Meanwhile, Alexs halfsister, Cynane Cyn, plays a dangerous game as she too wishes to be free from her own fate, But as some rise to power, some search for it in longlost magic, some wield it through unspeakable ways, and yet, some work to brutally rid it from the kingdom come what may.
And when the story naturally builds into an epic, heartpounding crescendo, nearing a window where fates can be reimagined, their lives and destines twine and unfurl in surprising, exciting and catastrophic ways.
“She has waited ten years for this moment, Ten years. It is more than just an eclipseiit signals the end of an era, the completion of another thousandyear cycle, According to the old priests and priestesses of the north, the Age of the Gods is coming to an end Many philosophers predict that during these great shifts, fates can be altered, curses lifted, and unthinkable feats achieved.
”
The main points of view Alex, Kat, Heph, Cyn, Jacob, Zo weave together brilliantly and distinctively, each characters voice and personality coming to life vividly.
In addition, I loved how we saw so many strong and fearless heroines, who were as complex as they were fierce, In Kat, Cyn, Zo and even Olympias, we see their dark sides through their manipulation and scheming sometimes with good intentions, sometimes not, We see friendships emerge and be tested, love challenged and seemingly lost, but through it all, a compulsively readable and gripping tale emerges that I was simply unable to put down.
Some might say that the beginning was somewhat slow, however, with so many POVs, a rich and complex world to enliven and a layered plot to build, I thought it was perfect and appropriate.
The detail in both setting and character development is essential to bringing this story to life,
History and magic, blood and bone, power and deceptionthey all mix masterfully in this epic saga of gods and royals,
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