Book Review: God of War

Christian Cameron's God of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great (2012) is the last on my list of historical fiction set in Ancient Greece to focus on the Macedonian King during his life.  Although I've still got six more books to go (and another by Cameron), this was the last to deal Alexander as a living man, rather than the legend he became.

For me, the novel had a lot of great strengths; putting the perspective character as his general Ptolemy was an excellent way to view the character from a different perspective (much as Mary Renault did in The Persian Boy) and also to slyly write a novel about the (arguably) greatest successor of Alexander, the battle scenes (as with all of Cameron's books I've read to date) were phenomenal, and the turning points in Alexander's life, where he goes from boy to man, man to king, and king to emperor, and at significant personal cost, were really striking to see from the point of view of a good childhood friend.

My biggest problem with the book was actually the length; at just under 900 pages it was fairly massive and I thought it could have either been pared down considerably or split into two novels, either way would have been fine by me, but I think that the narrative would also have moved better in either situation.

A really fun read, but perhaps not the first book I'd recommend for someone who wanted to read more about Alexander the Great.

Genre Character of the Week: Kratos

For the last month I’ve been playing the Playstation 2 game God of War on my PS3 (I bought it as the God of War Collection which contains the first two games of the series), and as I finished it on the weekend, I thought it would be a good idea to look at the Ghost of Sparta himself, as our genre character of the week, Kratos.

When you first begin the game, Kratos is pretty unsympathetic. He’s more of an anti-hero actually. He yells a lot, is incredibly single-minded and that’s almost it. Throughout the game more back story is given and you begin to understand why this man acts the way he does.

It’s also important to remember that Ancient Greece (even a mythological one featuring heavy God involvement and monsters) is pre-Judeo-Christian, and therefore instead of following a “treat others as you want to be treated” moral, Kratos follows a “help your friends and hurt your enemies” one. Only problem, he doesn’t really have any friends and he goes out of his way to hurt his enemies (meaning everyone).

Like Jim Profit, Kratos is not a person I would want anywhere near me or the people I care about, but at the same time, also like Jim Profit, he doesn’t let anything stand in the way between him and his goals (in the case of the first game, killing Ares, the God of War).

The game was fun (and in parts a little too adult to be playing while my youngest kid was around), but as a character, Kratos really stood out. I’m looking forward to starting the sequel this weekend.