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alanffm's review against another edition
3.0
This abridged excerpt from Herodotus' The Histories is an interesting read. Like its original, Xerxes Invades Greece can be an extremely boring and tedious experience for those uninterested in archaic styles of history that (like the bible) catalog things endlessly. Luckily, moments of intrigue and excitement are spaced out quite reasonably throughout the text and they are extremely engaging. The horrors of Persia are absolutely shocking, and Herodotus' arc about the Spartans and king Leonidas made for a great read. I'm not to happy about where the book ends, but I guess it had to end somewhere. I look forward to finishing the full Histories one day, but for now this will do.
ypres's review against another edition
La historia de Herodoto es genial, me ha encantado. Pero la edición de Penguin corta el maldito libro a la mitad (Jerjes llega a Atenas) y me ha parecido un timo considerable.
jplayjames's review
1.0
Pros:
* Starts with an X so you can read it for alphabet reading challenges
* You don't need to read the rest of Herodotus' Histories
* Probably of interest to historiographers or whatever
* I'm sure he was trying his best
Cons:
* Absolutely gd everything else. I don't care that it's a classic and historically significant, I care that it sucks. Shut up nerds.
* That one bit where H spends forever wildly estimating the number of "men" (both combatants and noncombatants) in Xerxes' army to the nearest 10 when it is more than 5 million, and then goes "also eunuchs, women, and animals, but who counts those sorts of things?"
* The experience of reading the thing
Conclusion:
I'm glad I don't live in 400BCE when all there was to read was this trash. More evidence, if such was needed, that life sucked before the advent of the Animorphs franchise.
* Starts with an X so you can read it for alphabet reading challenges
* You don't need to read the rest of Herodotus' Histories
* Probably of interest to historiographers or whatever
* I'm sure he was trying his best
Cons:
* Absolutely gd everything else. I don't care that it's a classic and historically significant, I care that it sucks. Shut up nerds.
* That one bit where H spends forever wildly estimating the number of "men" (both combatants and noncombatants) in Xerxes' army to the nearest 10 when it is more than 5 million, and then goes "also eunuchs, women, and animals, but who counts those sorts of things?"
* The experience of reading the thing
Conclusion:
I'm glad I don't live in 400BCE when all there was to read was this trash. More evidence, if such was needed, that life sucked before the advent of the Animorphs franchise.
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