Glorious Exploits (2024) by Ferdia Lennon

 Book Review

Glorious Exploits (2024)

by Ferdia Lennon

  Glorious Exploits was an Audiobook I checked out from the library (narrated by the author!) after I saw a couple of positive reviews and read the logline, "Athenian prisoners of war perform greek drama in Syracuse quarry pit."  Like Sparrow by James Hyne, Glorious Exploits is an attempt to tell a story shaped by contemporary literary fiction in a historic time period, here ancient Greece, (Well, Sicily anyway.) in Sparrow, it was ancient Rome.  It's a slight variation on the other recent trend in this area- retelling ancient myths from a new perspective, usually that of a female character.  Here, the narrator is a Syracusan citizen- proud but poor, who is just hanging out after the defeat of the invading Athenian army at the hands of the locals.  Instead of killing, ransoming or selling the Athenians into slavery, the Syracusans decide to dump the Athenians in a pit and slowly starve them to death.

   Lampo, the narrator, and Gelon are determined to carry this off for reasons that remain opaque but are somehow related to the death of Gelon's son at some point. Their fellow Syracusans reactions range from supportive to violent, and that generates much of the plot outside of the "We're putting on a show" bits.  I found Lampo engaging and quite enjoyed the voice of author Ferdia Lennon- it was like listening to a cheeky brit tell a compelling story about ancient Greece.  Glorious Exploits certainly was not "historical fiction" in the genre sense- there is talk or war, but only in the recent past, and there is some adventuring but it is limited to a late, third-act trip to the northern tip of Sicily.  It really was a refreshing change from the vast majority of literary fiction and I actually enjoyed the listening experience, often not true for literary fiction.