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Fire from Heaven Mary Renault Books

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Fire from Heaven Mary Renault Books

Mary Renault writes a great historical novel, with lots of excellent research, but then she brings it to life with memorable, believable characters. After reading about the first years, how the toddler, young Alexander was raised by his half-witch mother, Queen Olympias, and then taken away by his father, King Phillip of Macedon, you feel you understand some about him. Reading about the tutors and young men around Alexander, friends and his eventual lover, Hephaestion, you start to see Alexander become his own person. Unlike other reviewers, I prefer this book to the others of the trilogy... perhaps simply because Alexander has all his life and exciting future before him.


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Fire from Heaven Mary Renault Books Reviews

I don't read many novels, but this one is exceptional. I have bought and read 12 non-fiction books about Alexander the Great, and watched three documentaries, and this novel just adds to my knowledge of Alexander and Hephaestion. Andrew Chugg's book, "Alexander's Lovers", which I also ordered from , contains the most complete historical knowledge about Hephaestion, and "Fire from Heaven" gives us a glimpse into the possible youthful love between Alexander and Hephaestion. I really enjoyed the segment on page 166 where Miss Renault describes how Alexander and Hephaestion may have reacted to Aischylos' play Myrmindons about Achilles and Patroklos and how the other boys in Aristotle's class were "debating whether those two did anything or not." And the touching description of the first time that Alexander and Hephaestion made love between the thighs on pages 202 and 203 is so sweet without being graphic. Page 238 when we read, "Once in the dark he [Alexander] had murmured in Macedonian, [to Hephaestion]"You are the first and the last," and his voice might have been charged with ecstasy or intolerable grief." And page 226 when we read, "Alexander was lying flat on his back, staring upward. Suddenly he grasped Hephaestion in an embrace so fierce that it knocked the breath out of him,and said, "Without you I should go mad." "I too without you," said Hephaestion with loving ardor." Fire from Heaven also describes Alexander's relationship with his father which really helps one to understand the love-hate feelings between them. Anyone who has studied the life of Alexander the Great should read "Fire from Heaven". I've read it three times and wept everytime I've read it. Alexander was a very emotional man and I think he would understand my feelings. This book is well worth your time and money.
I was captivated from the first few words. Renault's rich and descriptive writing draws you into the world of Ancient Greece and Macedonia, and it is fascinating. I had never been interested in historical fiction before, but this book gave me an appreciation for it. I know that the author is respected as an historian, and I found that the history depicted (e.g. public, recorded events) matched up with the straight history that I had read and was reading concurrently with this book. So I never felt like I was taking in wrong information. It isn't hard to distinguish between historical fact and the filling in of details in this book. The author also includes a section at the end of the book explaining some of her assumptions and choices.

I read this after returning from a trip to Greece, which of course made the landscapes and distances easier to imagine. It was thrilling to read about Alexander and Hephaestion climbing up to Acrocorinth from Corinth after having recently made the same climb!
This is the first volume of Mary Renault's trilogy on Alexander the Great, the other two being "The Persian Boy" and "Funeral Games". While they are novels, they are quite reliable in their history. The immediacy of the narrative conveys a better understanding of life in those times than most history books. This volume covers Alexander's childhood to young adulthood, including the dramatic events surrounding his ascension to the throne at age 20 after his father's assassination. Though Renault was not an academic, her research for this trilogy was sufficient to became the basis for two non-fiction books on Alexander.

Renault is a master at making her characters come alive without violating the confines of their known history. She is an excellent writer, and the Alexander trilogy (at least the first two books) and her "The Last of the Wine" are her best writing in my opinion. After I read this book, I read quite a bit of other literature on Alexander, and then later read this book again. I believe that the more a reader knows about Alexander, the more he/she will appreciate this book. The ancient sources on Alexander are seamlessly woven into the developing narrative. In addition, there are fictionalized adolescent relationships that very well prefigure documented central relationships of his later life, including his lifelong friend Hephestion.

Renault clearly likes Alexander, but does not fall victim to the hagiographic style of many Alexander historians before 1950, like Tarn. She is a good counterweight to a modern school of Alexander historians, like Borza, Green, Worthington, etc., who seem intent on deconstructing his greatness and military genius.

The book succeeds as history, but even more importantly for this book, it succeeds as a novel. The characters are authentic and the narrative arc is spellbinding. Renault's writing introduced me to historical fiction years ago, and made me a lifelong fan of it.
Mary Renault was an English writer best known for her historical novels set in Ancient Greece. In addition to vivid fictional portrayals of Theseus, Socrates, Plato and Alexander the Great, she wrote a non-fiction biography of Alexander. If you have not yet read her work, do yourself a favor and purchase one of her novels... I particularly recommend either The Persian Boy or The Last of the Wine. This is also quite good. You will feel like you just spend a summer in ancient Greece.
Mary Renault writes a great historical novel, with lots of excellent research, but then she brings it to life with memorable, believable characters. After reading about the first years, how the toddler, young Alexander was raised by his half-witch mother, Queen Olympias, and then taken away by his father, King Phillip of Macedon, you feel you understand some about him. Reading about the tutors and young men around Alexander, friends and his eventual lover, Hephaestion, you start to see Alexander become his own person. Unlike other reviewers, I prefer this book to the others of the trilogy... perhaps simply because Alexander has all his life and exciting future before him.