Spartan
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3 Months Free
Spartan
Buy Now for £5.02
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Narrated by:
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Derek Jacobi
Herodotus tells us that not all of the three hundred Spartan warriors died at the hands of Xerxes, King of the Persians, in the battle of the Thermopylae: two were saved bringing a life-saving message back to the city . . .
Valerio Massimo Manfredi's Spartan is the saga of a Spartan family, torn apart by a cruel law that forces them to abandon one of their two sons - born lame - to the elements. The elder son, Brithos, is raised in the caste of the warriors, while the other, Talos, is spared a cruel death and is raised by a Helot shepherd, among the peasants.
They live out their story in a world dominated by the clash between the Persian empire and the city-states of Greece - a ferocious, relentless conflict - until the voice of their blood and of human solidarity unites them in a thrilling, singular enterprise.
I thoroughly enjoyed this book. It's a good story, with a decent pace and no obvious gaps from being an abridged version (though I've never read the full book so I might have missed something!)
Much of the story is from the position of the helots, the servant/ slave class that supported the Spartans. But don't let that fool you - it's a great story covering the famous battle of the 300, but more interestingly, the aftermath of that battle.
The story was really brought to life by the excellent narration - I can't praise Jacobi enough. It really highlighted just how good an audiobook can be if the narrator is top class, which Derek Jacobi is.
A good, well-paced, brilliantly read story!
Excellent - particularly the narration
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