The Virtues of War: A Novel of Alexander the Great; Steven Pressfield; 2004

It takes an act of courage to write a fictional novel about Alexander III of Macedon.  He's a historical figure with an enormous body of scholarly writing devoted to him, so you will be under close scrutiny as to the "accuracy" of your fiction; at the same time, the historical records are sparse and conflicting, and many of Alexander's exploits that can be agreed upon in the ancient sources would strain credulity without corroboration, and so the need for any fictionalization seems merely a matter of filling in the gaps with some guesswork.


To write a fictional novel about Alexander III of Macedon in the first person is, ultimately, an act of foolhardiness.  Alexander's generals, all brilliant military men, would be difficult enough to write in the first person, and he was their superior as tactician, strategist, politician, and leader, as well as a consummate horseman and ferocious fighter, with a keen interest in architecture and engineering.  Mitt Romney would have a better chance of channeling the thoughts of a son of illegal immigrants.


Pressfield bravely attempts the impossible anyway, and further compounds this initial error by making his protagonist unchanging.  His Alexander claims to have learned nothing of strategy and tactics since the age of ten, and his character does not waver over the course of the book.  This is boring, and a deadly sin in a first-person account.  Interestingly, Pressfield's novel does contain a character who undergoes a spiritual transformation: Telamon, one of Philip's men who helped to teach a young Alexander what it meant to be a soldier.  He might have done better to make Telamon his narrator, both as a character who does grow and change, and as one whose voice he could believably assume.