sitelinkThe Persian Boy made me want to linger, this one made me want to get through it quickly because I knew everything would go to hell in a handbasket in a major way.
Like Anna says in sitelinkher review, it's that third book few authors would have the gumption to write, From the intimate, loving dignity of Bagoas' voice, it switches to a brisker tone a chronicle, still beautifully written but also much more matteroffact, of how after the golden hero's death, his legacy falls rapidly and perhaps inevitably there was only one Alexander to pieces, his lovers dead or irreversibly diminished, his potential heirs' future precarious at best, his generals and former friends tearing down each other and his kingdom.
Ptolemy was the only breath of fresh air, wisely choosing to stay out of the succession wars and go found a dynasty in Egypt instead.
I'd always liked him but I loved him madly for thinking of Bagoas and making sure he had a place that might eventually mend his soul a bit it hurt so much to see Bagoas reduced to a broken shell, and his offhand mention of the only reason he didn't kill himself because he didn't want to intrude on Alexander and Hephaistion's reunion made me cry long after I thought I was done.
Apart from Bagoas, my sympathy here lay mostly with the women Roxane, Eurydike and Olympias who tried to make a place for themselves after Alexander's death, and were thwarted.
Roxane and Olympias have mostly been characterised as ruthless murderous harpies but let's be honest, either of them could've done as good a job or better as any of the men who grasped for power and Eurydike was mostly lacking age and experience.
The whole thing stays pretty brutal all the way through, so I was glad she chose to end on the chapter with Ptolemy it was a little bit of a breath of relief.
I didnt expect to be doing this, but Im actually marking Funeral Games down from the first two books in Mary Renaults trilogy Fire From Heaven and The Persian Boy.
The difference Renault jumps about a lot in time here, Of course her previous novels did this too all of them were selective in their scenes, not comprehensive but this time round Renault covers a much wider span of time, the events of thirtyseven years in total, a wider range than the first two books combined.
And historically those thirtyseven years were chock full of conflicts, plots, and sudden reversals of fortune as Alexanders generals duked it out for a slice of his empire.
As a result, Renault ends up jumping from event to event, and some scenes, especially in the second half of the book, feel abbreviated, and the characters sketched rather than fully, immersively formed.
That was my single major problem with Funeral Games, It was difficult to get into the story in the same way I had with The Persian Boy or Fire From Heaven, when Renault had to sketch the huge cast of characters that pop up over these thirtyseven years and resort to a tiny brushstroke here and there to try and convey much more about these characters.
The first half of the book felt much better written than the second half, largely because it spends a lot of time on the immediate aftermath of Alexanders death, and Renault can lavish more pages on events and developing the characters involved.
It distinctly feels like a more coherent narrative, This section of the novel retains Renaults signature deft touch at characterisations and breaking down complex events into something lucid and understandable on a human level, without detracting from their complexity.
In the second half, where many more years are spanned and characters far apart in location, there is a greater degree of summarisation going on,
A positive addition is that we get inside the heads of some of the people most closely connected to Alexander family members, and the comrades who knew him the best.
Through their eyes we finally see Alexander, how and why he was revered after his death, and how some who fought to carve up his empire for themselves failed spectacularly.
A sense of ominous foreboding and unease permeates the whole book as the empire crumbles, and some of Alexanders old friends try to preserve it and his memory, others make a grab for power, and others simply see the writing on the wall.
The character of Ptolemy provides what I felt was Renaults opinion on the failure of Alexanders empire the nature of Alexander was a mystery, he says, that could inspire great deeds and achieve the unachievable, and with his death they are all left merely fallible men.
out of The final and the most brutal part of the trilogy, Alexanders death without at least a teenage son from Macedonian woman left a power vacuum,
What happened next was a vicious fight for the throne, Hence the body count.
And only Ptolemy wants to leave this fight and go to Egypt, Wise decision in hindsight.
Interestingly, this violent novel had the best female characters of the trilogy, And all of them were mesmerizing to follow till the end,
Mary Renault now joins Dorothy Dunnett and Hilary Mantel in the pantheon of great historical fiction writers, This is the final book in the Alexander the Great trilogy and, in my opinion, the best of the three, It tells the story of the struggle for power and the division of Alexander's empire following his death and brings the brutality and intrigue of that time right onto the page.
This is an author who really knows her subject and the depth of research is apparent throughout the book even though it is a fictional account, However, this is also a very good story, keeping the reader captivated until the very end,
There are a lot of characters in this book but a handy list of the main ones is included at the beginning so that you can recall who's who and, because they are so well written, you get to know them very quickly anyway.
The book explains different factions' claims to the Macedon dynasty and how each tried to achieve these how some of Alexander's generals stayed loyal to his family whilst others followed their own causes, or those of the strongest man left standing, taking over and strengthening parts of the empire.
More than anything else, the book managed to convey the enormity of Alexander's feat in building his empire and in maintaining the love and loyalty of his soldiers and his family even though he is no longer a live character.
A fascinating read for anyone interested in this period of history, This last book was better than I thought it'd be, I wondered, how good could it be if Alexander isn't even in it This is basically the story of how, postdeath, various characters bid for power, My favorite being Eurydike, of course, And even though Alexander has died, you still feel his presence in this book, godlike and unmatched, “Renaults best historical novel yet, Every detail has solid historical testimony to support it, ”New York Books
After Alexanders death inB, C. his only direct heirs were two unborn sons and a simpleton halfbrother, Every longsimmering faction exploded into the vacuum of power, Wives, distant relatives, and generals all vied for the loyalty of the increasingly undisciplined Macedonian army, Most failed and were killed in the attempt, For no one possessed the leadership to keep the great empire from crumbling, But Alexanders legend endured to spread into worlds he had seen only in dreams, Bullet :
I REALLY REALLY liked the first half and that would have beenstars, But then we started doing the time warp and I felt I was really an anthology of various people who knew Alexander instead of a cohesive novel.
Still some good characters, but huge leaps in time skipping numerous events, But the end was worst large jump in time, summarizing events,
Full :
Alexander the Great is dead this is not a spoiler, and the various men and even women who knew him or of him desperately claw to get on top of the pile and to rule over the massive Empire Alexander carved.
At it's most basic, that's exactly what this story is, though there is far more going on that this one sentence cannot get into,
I'm sitting here, thinking, and I don't even know how I would begin to do what Renault did, What happened after Alexander died, the chaos, the powerseeking there's a LOT of STUFF that happens, many people clawing to get to the top, So many people, all with different motivations and hopes for the kingdom, whether it be unification or just a small place to call his or her own.
I loved the first half, LOVED. Slowly, I'd been "getting" Renault and her craft as I've read through her Alexander the Great trilogy, and it was the first half of this book that everything clicked.
I loved the characters, the way the story flowed everything,
The problem happened as soon as we did the year jump, In previous books, time does pass, but it's nothing quite as jarring as seeing the big block letters "B, C. " on the top of the page, I think, in order to show as much chaos and all the different peoples' intricate plans, Renault felt she had to do the Time Warp, And I don't know if it quite succeeded, When you jump a year, there are things that happen such a Ptolemy moving to Egypt and taking over governorship there, This is something that is a given the audience never sees it, And it feels weird that I should just accept it happened, when normally, this would be one more piece in the puzzle, In fact, I think Ptolemy in general gets the shaft because we hardly see him at all in the book,
We have quite the buildup to talking about Antipatros' reign and then fast forward to the end and boom, yet time for another power struggle! What about the politics in that year of his reign You cannot tell me that life was hunkydory while he was ruling, that Eurydike and Roxane and Kassandros had just thrown their hands up and accepted his rule.
These are just a couple of the instances where I felt that I was only getting a small, small snippet of the most "exciting" portions of postAlexander life.
In many ways, it felt more like an anthology, a collection of short stories than a fulllength cohesive novel,
And really, the disconnectedness is what makes me rate this lower, There's still a mighty good story I loved Eurydike, even if she was incredibly stupid at times but it feels like excerpts of a story instead of a full blown one.
Coming to the end of this book, I felt kinda sad, I've been Buddy Reading this trilogy with my friend for over a year now, and it's sad to leave the fascinating and exotic world of Alexander behind.
I have really grown to appreciate Renault and her way with words and history, To people who think all history is boring, lemme just say: If you find it boring, you are reading the wrong author! Because history is absolutely FASCINATING in the hands of a
competent author.
NOTE: Thank you to the amazing, sitelinkIset for a fabulous Buddy Read! This was an enjoyable run let's do this again! This was honestly one of the most catastrophic books ever.
I don't mean it was bad, just that everything in it was awful, It's the final chapter of a trilogy that no one ever writes, the part, after the hero has died, where everything goes to absolute shit and everything he worked for and stood for disintegrates.
I loved the afterward where Renault points out that she actually left out a ton of the murders, The only one I noticed was Kleopatra's though because her storyline just stopped after Perdikkas's death, The worst ones were Roxanne killing the pregnant Strataira and the deaths of Eurydike and Ariadios,
Eurydike was mostly awesome and so young, she was the perfect foil for Alexander who got near everything right and could see so far, while she was so sheltered even though her nature and nurture had set her such similar ambitions.
Her storyline was certainly the most wellpadded out and engaging, And her end was so shattering,
Renault handled all the chopping and changing of characters really well so that the storylines linked well, Bagoas at least was left some measure of peace and Ptolemy came out smelling of roses and had the last word which was nice,
So basically everything was terrible and I loved it, .