Customer Reviews

Spartacus (Polyg9on Lewis Grassic Gibbon)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Lewis Grassic Gibbon (or James Leslie Mitchell) has written a novel of Spartacus that is as refreshing as it is clearly one of the forerunners of historical fiction. Opening through the eyes of the eunuch Kleon and his mission to find the heroic leader of the Slaves the novel centers more around Spartacus 'inner circle' and his relationship with Elpinice. Book I is told through Kleon and deals with the period up to the defeat after the Battle of the Lake. Books II and III with Spatracus' victories until we move towards the well-known and inexorable end on the Appian way at the hands of Marcus Licinius Crassus at the end of Book VI. The novel ends as it begins, with Kleon, and his crucifixion
The novel is well written, well-paced and pauses sufficiently to voice greater philospohical views than historical novels of the current generation. It is easy to see why this has been heralded as one of the great novels of its genre.

The strength of this novel is its strong prose style, a style that Ian Campbell has correctly described as "flexible and arresting." (xxvi) The novel's weakness is its limited characterization. For all its fine evocative passages, the characters are flat and fail to develop. Perhaps we can excuse former slaves for being emotionally stunted, but the reader may soon cease to care whether such people live or die.

And die they all do. This is a novel littered with corpses. Even though Mitchell, writing in the 1930s, could not have anticipated the sort of blood lust in which twenty-first-century Hollywood wallows, his numerous unpleasant deaths, coolly observed, are still multiple deaths from which the humanity has been drained.

Finally, mention should be made of what Campbell calls Mitchell's "occasionally injudicious reliance on one effect." (xxix) Some characters have a leitmotif that follows them insistently (and sometimes irritatingly) through the story. The author also has a fascination with Latin, Greek, and obscure English words. Although the reader can usually deduce what the unknown word must mean, occasionally Mitchell goes overboard, as when he writes that "beyond the horreum itself, through a fence of osiers, the steadings of a farm loomed." (56)

This novel is an amazing masterpiece of prose. I cannot praise this book enough! The opening scene is one of the most memorable and epic works of writing I have ever read.

I just finished reading this book. It was absolutely fantastic. The author's command of the English language...his use of imagery, metaphor, symbolism, foreshadowing..etc was made this book a joy to read.

I read reviews for ALL of the books I buy on Amazon. I have 70 some-odd books now about Rome: straight history, biographies and historical fiction. The reviews are usually pretty accurate. EXCEPT FOR WITH THIS BOOK! I read the 6 reviews currently out there which average 5 stars, and I can say that I completely disagree. The author's use of the English language is frustrating to me. I have a college degree...yet I don't want to read something that comes off like Shakespeare, because I don't enjoy that. I want something that flows, something that I don't have to re-read because I lost focus or couldn't follow the archaic writing style. Simply put, I am now reading two other books while this one sits, half read, awaiting another attempt to finish it. And only because I am stubborn will I be able to attain this goal. This book, to me, is simply not that good.

This book is a deeply insightful look into the soul of an extraordinary human being - great great great - a true work of art!

I don't understand why this isn't at the top of the Spartacus search. The movie was adapted from THIS novel, why would anything be above it? Excellent novel, and a must-have for those who love history and/or historical fiction.

This is another book on Spartacus. It was a good read, but I doubt it I will read it again. There are books that are worthy of a second and third read, sometimes. This is not one of them. There is a great deal of assumptions on the actual events that kind of took away from the story. OK for Roman buffs, but there are other books on the subject that are better.