The Fire of Ares
by Michael Ford

Release Date: 7th Jan 2008
Publisher: Bloomsbury
ISBN: 978 0 7475 9366 9
RRP: £6.99

The first in the Spartan Warrior series

The Fire of Ares is the first in the Spartan Warrior series. It features Lysander, a teenage helot (or slave) set in an historical Grecian backdrop in the days of kings, Spartan warriors and lots of Romanesque backstabbing.

In some respects, this novel is typical of adolescent literature – it features a boy of a certain age, who is unwittingly crucial to some mysteriously hinted at prophesy, as well as an inevitable hapless sidekick in the form of Timeon and of course, a mystical amulet called The Fire of Ares – handed down to Lysander from his unknown dead father. It would be undemanding for me to square this one off as run-of-the-mill teenage fiction, but I don’t like the easy path, so I’m not going to.

Ford’s style is snappy, direct and compact, which helps keep the story fluid. That’s not to say that he scrimps on detail, but most of the nuances come from his clearly researched understanding of the Grecian era. The story stands up as a single piece of text, which is always particularly welcome when such books are sold as a package deal. As with most package deals though, there are some shortcomings, in that the characters are not a widely drawn as I would have liked. By the end of the book, I still felt that I didn’t know or understand Lysander... but this is light entertainment at its best - a page-turner that gallops along at a comfortable pace and is acutely aware of its target audience. I am ever grateful to the author that there has been no testosterone-fuelled carrying on, except for the mandatory and inevitable scraps as Lysander ascends from slave status to Spartan wannabe.

I shall be keeping a close eye on this series... if Ford can maintain this standard throughout, this may turn out to be a serious contender in this genre for 2008.

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