[Sieben]

Hi all,

The author closest in style to Gemmell is Robert Howard of Conan fame.

If you are coming afresh to Gemmell you should start with Legend.

David Gemmells love affair with Ancient Greece is now continued in his series about Troy - Lord of the Silver Bow.

As some of you commented it is interesting the different slant that Gemmell places on characters from history that we are familiar with - in the Lord of the Silver Bow the princes of Troy are the heroes.

Gemmell tells intimate storeies on epic landscapes, his characterization is excellent and his prose and story development so lean that it gives all his books a sense of pace that is so lacking in some of the sprawling epics that are out there presently i.e. Robert Jordan and George Martin.

The best quality in gemmels stories is the way he blurs the lines between good and evil - many of his characters have an ambiguous nature that can let them do good or evil.

Gemmell is never quite given the credit for the subtelty of his writing, his charcters grow and learn but we are never hit over the head with this. Again as some of you previously said it was very clever to tell the Alexander story through the eyes of Parmenion. The casual reader does not realise the depth of knowledge displayed by Gemmell in weaving his fictional story into actual historical facts.

I'm starting to ramble a bit now but let me just close by saying that if you enjoyed lion of Macedon and Dark Prince you really should read Steven Pressfields Gates of Fire, it is magnificent.

Sieben