1986 alternate history. While camped at Bactra and on the verge of the
Indian campaign, Alexander the Great hears of a revolt among the Greek
cities he left behind him. So he turns back…
That's the point of it, really; to explore how Alexander's world
might have changed if he'd been forced to turn back and secure his
empire rather than expanding it further.
After Greece, he's lured into the Italian peninsula in something
approximating the Pyrrhic war, which is clearly an authorial excuse to
pit phalanx against Roman legion; Bret Devereaux has been running a
fascinating
serieson
this recently, and it's interesting to see some of the same points
raised at several decades' remove. Obviously Scott's sympathy is with
Alexander, but she doesn't assume that he'll simply win purely by
being Alexander: he has to back that up with morale and discipline,
and take advantage of the weaknesses of same in the enemy.
After Rome, he naturally has to go on to Carthage, because they're
both a military (sea-raiding) and a political threat. There's plenty
of siegecraft, as well as politics and psychology with unwilling
allies.
Most of the narrative viewpoints are from Alexander's Companions, and
I particularly appreciated the way that they're portrayed as
continuing to love and follow him while remaining aware that he's
human and dangerously fallible.
Intermissions leap forward to various moments centuries later, to show
the world of Alexander's empire projected into its future, with its
problems but also its triumphs.
It's a fascinating approach to alternate history, which I enjoy now
rather more than when I first read it at about the time of publication.
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