Word: renaults
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...writer of Renault's re-creative powers had little difficulty moving from Theseus, mythical founder of a unified Attica, to Alexander the Great, who spread the seed of Hellenism across Asia Minor, North Africa and the brow of India. In Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy, Renault took the most romantic of all military heroes from his beginnings as son of Philip of Macedon through his glories as youthful conqueror...
Funeral Games ends the trilogy. The novel opens in 323 B.C. with Alexander, 33, dying of swamp fever in a Babylonian palace. Renault guides us through the property, noting its special features and listing the previous owners. Her description could be a model for Beverly Hills realtors: "Nebuchadrezzar's bedroom, once ponderously Assyrian, had been Pesianized by successive kings from Kyros on. Kambyses had hung its walls with the trophies of conquered Egypt; Darius the Great had sheathed its columns with gold and malachite: Xerxes had pegged across one side the embroidered robe of Athene, looted from the Parthenon...
Such loaded passages are frequently necessary to keep the reader oriented in ancient history. Characters, many related by polygamy, swarm out of the giltwork and malachite. All have their ambitions, dreams and passions. One of the refreshments of Renault's ancient world is the absence of modern psychology. All that is needed to define the cast are the seven deadly sins, mainly wrath, avarice, envy and, above all, pride...
...some women are too, an athletic teen-ager named Eurydike is practicing her javelin toss and dreaming of asserting a claim to the throne. Eurydike is the granddaughter of Philip II; her grandmother was an Illyrian warrior whom Philip wed to seal a peace treaty. Renault handles the matter discreetly: "The lady would not have been his choice for her own sake; she was comely, but he had trouble remembering which sex he was in bed with...
...principal problem that Renault faces in concluding her trilogy is that she must do so without her hero. In Fire from Heaven and The Persian Boy, Alexander the Not Yet Great and Alexander the Great held the spotlight and spurred the action. In Funeral Games it is his absence that motivates events. Yet the novelist-historian has done a fine job in focusing nearly half a century of chaos. Her prose, as usual, has an Attic clarity; her research is sound and her imagined scenes cenotaphs. Lacking the actual remains, they convey the unparalleled aura of Alexander and his time...