Reviews

The Persian Boy by Mary Renault

aminas_venting_machine's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional informative inspiring sad slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

3.75

I knew how it must end from the beginning, the ending still absolutely destroyed me

As a non native speaker, I genuinely feel exhausted after reading this book; I had to really pay attention to understand what was going on, the writing is a little cryptic imo (but it is fun to read between the lines)

In beetween, there were a few passages that were dragging a little.

I found the characters and their relationships quite interesting

thesingingbook's review against another edition

adventurous challenging emotional reflective medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.5

mathieudmrs's review against another edition

slow-paced

2.75

This book is lucky Alexander the Great is so interesting.

samuelachillese's review against another edition

I liked it a lot, just can't read about war right now. I'll revisit it another time. 

lillymvb's review against another edition

slow-paced

pauloleary's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional informative tense medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? A mix
• Strong character development? Yes
• Loveable characters? Yes
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

kasss's review against another edition

3.5

This book started out incredibly strong, and I appreciated Bagoas as a narrator. After the first book focused on (but was not narrated by) Alexander, I think the decision to look at this part of his life from an outsider's perspective was a good one.

Unfortunately, once Bagoas joined Alexander's party, the story went downhill for me. Turns out I found Bagoas' early days more interesting than his constant obsessive behaviour with Alexander. The story started to drag, and I wish we'd gotten more narrators (and more Hephaestion). The writing is still incredible, but after its strong start, the rest of the book left me feeling a bit disillusioned with this well acclaimed series. Not sure I'll read the last book.

jiu_2024's review against another edition

adventurous dark emotional hopeful informative reflective

• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? No

4.25

cryo_guy's review against another edition

adventurous emotional medium-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? No
• Loveable characters? No
• Diverse cast of characters? Yes
• Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

Well I started this off with mediocre hopes. The first of the Alexander trilogy was not my favorite of Renault's but I liked it better than the very middling Theseus books. I thought that this one might be interesting because of the fresh Persian perspective but it ultimately was not that great. It started off okay, but by the end the protagonist had become insufferable to me. He's one of those types where he can barely see any other perspective in life than his own. And at the end, he's just spits on Greek culture. There's a story there about Alexander's admiration of Persian culture and adoption of Persian customs, but it didn't end up being that appealing to me. A lot of it is even more than just Persian vs. Greek culture, but Bagoas' romance with Alexander and how much in love with him he is. Everything is filtered through his perspective so you are stuck with his inanities no matter where you go. You're forced to sympathize with this guy and if you don't well tough. Part of my difficulty is that he seems talented and intelligent beyond what he should be capable of, but I guess its not completely immersion breaking. I liked the plot and story well enough but by the end I was really ready to leave off this Persian's account of things. I still think the Persian perspective would be cool, but it just really misses the mark with Bagoas or with Renault's Bagoas at least.

So some fun moments, a retracing of Alexander's conquest and review of the big moments, a lot of Bagoas' mostly uninteresting perspective. Not so bad that it's unreadable though haha.

basementofbooks's review against another edition

adventurous challenging dark slow-paced

• Plot- or character-driven? Character
• Strong character development? It's complicated
• Loveable characters? It's complicated
• Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
• Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0