The Last King of Lydia

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He comes to realize that his power has limits because "It's a difficult thing, having one's happiness depend on those one cannot control" -- like his son's guaranteed well-being. Although I do appreciate the costume-pageantry details of Colleen McCullough's "Masters of Rome" series or the grit of Robert Harris' Cicero books, Leach's approach to his semi-mythological subject matter works well in its own context. In some ways Cyrus can be seen as the inventor of the concept of leaving people alone to worship as they please: “permissively plural,” as Cyrus’s theory is jokingly described by a slave in the novel.

But then all his riches could not remove the spear from his dying elder son's chest; could not bring his mute younger son to speak; could not make him as wise as his own chief slave; could not bring his wife's love back; could not prevent his army from being torn apart and his kingdom lost. The story really is about how he thinks about the world, and his relationships with other characters, who I think you could see almost as parts of his own personality. Lots of interesting things happen; wars are fought, lives are saved, great wealth accumulated, and almost all of it is done because it makes a powerful man happy. Croesus is master of his own destiny and it is only his thoughtless behavior that will bring about his downfall. I can't claim any expert knowledge on the historical accuracy and I suspect Leach occasionally allows a few modern perspectives to infiltrate the minds of his characters, but for me that is forgivable.The second half of the book then covers how Croesus handles the humiliation of losing everything he held dear and the loss of status.

On the surface, the book is an enjoyable adventure set in an ancient world, but the message of the book goes much deeper. His gradual epiphany gives the book an optimistic feel despite some of the story’s brutal realities. The first excellent thing about this book is that even if, like me, you’re an ancient history dunderhead, Leach eases you through it effortlessly. In fact, for many of the same reasons, I thought the book compared favorably to another recent fabulistic treatment of semi-mythological classical Greek material, Madeline Miller's "Song of Achilles," a lovely re-telling of the Iliad.Fortunately, the book does go in a slightly more inventive direction once we get past the traditional Croesus narrative.