This is a historical novel set in the camp of Alexander the Great. It’s a murder mystery where a young doctor tries to solve a series of murders happening in the camp of Alexander when he’s camped near Sestos and waiting for an auspicious sacrifice so that he and his army can cross the Hellespont, and later after the crossing.

The novel has three prologues. This is usually not a good sign but they sort of fit here. First of the prologues sets the stage of the Persian court with the intrigue of the Persian generals and one Greek general, Memnon. They also establish that they have a spy in Alexander’s camp. The second prologue is a discussion between the main character Telamon and co-regent Olympia where she practically blackmails Telamon to join Alexander. The third is about a girl who is wandering fearfully and without her memory. She is taken by a sailor to the temple of Athena.

The physician Telamon arrives somewhat reluctantly to Alexander’s camp and is greeted by the king. Telamon is one of Alexander’s oldest childhood friends and so gets into the king’s circle of friends. Telamon is shown his first patient: the aforementioned girl who can barely speak. Telamon determines that the cause of her condition is fear and administrates a drink which puts her to sleep so that her mind can heal itself during the sleep. However, only a few moments later the girl is found poisoned and dead. The only ones around had been Telamon, Alexander and his general, and Antigone, a priestess of Athene who had been taking care of the girl. Alexander commands Telamon to find the murderer. Soon, one of Alexander’s guides is found murdered with a Celtic dagger and with a parchment on his hand. On the parchment are written some lines from the Iliad. Telamon starts to suspect Alexander’s generals because they almost the only ones who can read and write.

There are quite a few secondary characters in the books and it seems that most of them have a historical model: the general, Alexander’s soothsayer Aristander, and of course Alexander himself. Alexander is shown to have very quickly changing moods: friendly to the soldiers, wily in his plots, curious toward almost anything he doesn’t know, superstitious, loyal to friends, and yet terrible to his enemies. The writing is easy and quick to read but the plot isn’t complicated and while it’s possible to guess the murdered beforehand, the motive and method are quite far fetched and not even hinted of until the very end. I also felt that the story was drawn out needlessly. There is a description of the battle of Granicus near the end and it’s completely unnecessary to the rest of the book except maybe for the plotting of the Persians.

While most of the historical details seem to be alright, there were some things that bothered me. There just seems to be an inordinate amount of atheists or unbelievers among the characters. Even the priestess admits that she doesn’t believe in her goddess. It seems to me that this is quite a modern notion especially talking about it to other people. Of course, it might be quite hard to know now what the people really thought about their gods but as far as I know, most people just did their sacrifices and if they had any doubts, they kept their mouths shut about it. Of course, war time conditions might influence atheistic thoughts but it still seem strange how matter-of-factly people talked about it.

I was also not aware that most Athenian and Persian warriors were transvestites who mimicked the gestures of courtesans. They might have worn colorful clothing but that doesn’t automatically mean that they are women’s clothes. I was also quite thrown that the soldiers made fun of men who used young boys. I was under the impression that it was quite common at the time. Also, the book lacked pages 133-180 and reprinted earlier pages for those. I was still able to finish the book without a problem and I’m not sure if that’s good or bad thing. (Good for me but bad for the structure and pacing?)

All in all, the book didn’t live up to my expectations. Then again Alexander is my favorite historical character and so I had quite high expectations. I also realized that it’s been (gasp!) over a decade since I’ve last read anything about Alexander’s life and that I need to remedy that. I’ve put Mary Renault’s Life of Alexander on my wish list so that it will be among my next batch of books. I also checked to see if any of books are in the library and they have Alexander trilogy but it’s almost 900 pages long. I’d also liked to have a good, prose translation of the Iliad. Sadly, the only Finnish translation is very poetic and apparently the translation team took more than a few poetic licenses with it so I’ll have to turn to an English translation. Any recommendations?