Trying to lighten the workload as I peruse the freshly released Nintendo Wii, I take another look at Pressfield and review Tides of War.

I opt to avoid reviewing more than one title in the same franchise as much as I can: I rarely focus solely on the game reviewed, but also touch upon the series it belongs to as a whole, so I am afraid reviews of two sequels would appear too much alike.

However, since the entertainment industry is infected with sequelitis, reviewing multiple entries in the same franchise is inevitable, so I figured it was high time to give it a try. With my book reviews not gathering nearly as much attention as those of video-games, Pressfield’s historical fiction series was a safe place to experiment on and things apparently turned out relatively well.

After attaining some degree of notoriety with my popular Football Manager and PES articles, I decided to bum everyone out with a book review. Few were better candidates for the spotlight than Steven Pressfield‘s Gates of Fire.

At the time, there was a slight buzz surrounding Frank Miller‘s graphic novel 300 making the transition to the big screen and it was quickly apparent that people would quote it like crazy.

The line on everyone’s mouth was, of course, “This! is! Sparta!”, but I was far more entertained by the historically documented “then we’ll have our fight in the shade” retort I had already seen on Pressfield’s book.

Pressfield’s “through the eyes of the sidekick” technique absolutely blew me away when I first read it and I knew I’d inevitably write about him, eventually. The timing finally seemed right and, even though Last of the Amazons is my favourite, I said my piece on Pressfield through his Gates of Fire.

Maybe we’ll get to Amazons when the Wonder Woman movie is approaching for reals.