Funeral Games

I found this book in my school library first ("Persian Boy" and "Fire From Heaven" apparently not being there.) While Alexander is dead by chapter 1, and I've never read the books in which he is portrayed alive, I was amazed by Mary Renault's skill in preserving his spirit throughout the novel, so that in a sense Alexander really is a character, though he was already comatose from the start.Also, the high stakes and level... Read Full Review

Alexander may be dead in chapter one, but his spirit looms large in the pages of this book, as indeed it must have done in the world immediately after his passing. This book is a stunning and breathtaking journey through the ten or twenty years following Alexander's death - a time when men who would be king, and indeed women who would be queen, play for the known world as though it was a chess board. It is a measure... Read Full Review

Being an fan of this particular period of history, and having read the Persian Boy, I was prepared to be critical of Funeral Games. Instead I found it absorbing, historically accurate (as far as I could tell) and a fairly dispassionate set of observations on the demise of Alexander's empire. Again it's Bagoas who narrates, but Alexander is gone, and so is Hephestias, leaving the crown for the taking. Pawns and would-be... Read Full Review