Last Of The Amazons
A superbly evocative, exciting and moving historical tale that brings the past expertly to life
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4.1 • 7 Ratings
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- £4.99
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- £4.99
Publisher Description
A dazzling and profoundly moving tale of love and war, honour and revenge from Steven Pressfield, author of the Sunday Times Bestseller Gates of Fire.
"Beyond the best battle scenes I've ever read - brutal, bloody and thoroughly gripping" -- DIANA GABALDON
"Steven Pressfield...makes the distant past seem real and immediate. This is historical fiction elevated to the status of myth." -- DANIEL SILVA
"Pressfield writes with a quality and style akin to classical legend...a joy to read" -- JOHN WHITBOURN
"A gripping, un-put downable read!" -- ***** Reader review
"Great reading. Thrilling, exciting and then some." -- ***** Reader review
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TO THEM HONOUR AND LOYALTY WERE EVERYTHING...
1250 BC: Theseus, king of Athens and slayer of the Minotaur, set sail on a journey that brought him to the land of 'tal Kyrte', the 'Free People', a nation of fiercely proud and passionate warrior women whom the Greeks called 'Amazons'.
Lovers and fighters they owed allegiance to no man and distrusted the Greeks with their boastful talk of cities and civilization. When their illustrious war queen Antiope fell in love with Theseus and fled to Athens with the king and his followers, so denying her people, the Amazon tribes were outraged. Seeking revenge, they raised a vast army and marched on Athens.
History tells us they could not win, but for a brief and glorious moment, the Amazons held the Attic world in thrall before vanishing into the immortal realms of myth and legend.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Writing about ancient Greece with rich historical detail, passion and drama, Pressfield has previously dramatized the battle of Thermopylae (Gates of Fire) and the Peloponnesian War (Tides of War). Here, he steps further back in time, to 1250 B.C., when the civilized Greek city-state of Athens confronts the barbaric empire of the Amazons in a titanic struggle for survival. The novel does not pack the emotional punch of Pressfield's other Greek fiction, but it still rings with the clamor and horror of close combat, sword on shield, battle-ax on helmet and javelins thudding into armor. The Amazon kingdom, peopled and ruled by a ferocious society of female warriors, occupies land near the Black Sea. The Amazon war queen, Antiope, leads an army of female warriors feared for their savage cruelty and hatred of the Greeks. When Theseus, the Greek king of Athens, journeys into Amazon territory, he and Antiope spar verbally, but fall in love, creating a dilemma for both. Antiope forswears her allegiance to the Amazon life and flees with Theseus back to Athens to become his wife. Antiope's successor, her Amazon lover, Eleuthera, vows to wipe out Athens to erase the shame and treachery of Antiope and Theseus's marriage. She leads a mighty invasion of Greece, culminating in a long siege and a climactic battle before Athens's great walls. Amid the carnage, gore and violence, Pressfield presents a love story so grand it pits nations against one another. Pressfield's javelin is his pen and he wields it well in this gruesome tale of ancient blood lust in an age when there is no word for mercy.
