A PYRRHIC VICTORY: Fate, the third installment in Ian Crouch’s series of historical novels, deals with the aftermath of the battle of Asculum, the fateful confrontation between the Romans and the armies of Pyrrhus that gave rise to the term “Pyrrhic victory”. FATE reads like what it is–a celebration of a lifelong interest in Greek and Roman history. Crouch, like Edward Gibbon (whose Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was clearly formative), has a penchant for great men, and paints Pyrrhus as such. His portrayal is immensely sympathetic: the king of Epirus is presented as reasonable, just, personally courageous (an early chapter shows him bearing the excruciating pain of cauterization without proper anesthetic), and likable. Descriptions are detailed and lucid, while characterization is exacting and relevant.

The main issues here derive from the subject matter. Unless one is highly conversant with ancient European history, much of the politics needs to be detailed before one can properly assess its importance. Crouch senses this, and is at pains to ensure his reader follows the ebb and flow of diplomacy in the Greco-Roman world. This gives the book, like its immediate predecessor Destiny Unfolds, a highly expository nature–the significance of events is often explained to the reader rather than demonstrated. To some extent this is a necessity given the period. Some of how society was organized in the ancient world is familiar to us today, but a great deal is less than intuitive, placing Crouch in the position of having to add context more often than would be ideal. He does it well–he has a pithy turn of phrase that lends the whole a remarkable economy of language–but it nevertheless has the effect of slowing down the pace.

Then again, to expect such a property in a work of over 500 pages may be to miss the point. What really fascinates Crouch are the minutiae of Pyrrhus’ life and his times, and he narrates the ruler’s life in meticulous detail, cleaving to the real-life events (or rather, what we know of them) as closely as possible, right down to the strangely matter-of-fact fashion in which he met his death (he was either killed by a roofing tile thrown by a woman or was decapitated by an enemy while dazed after the blow; Crouch has it both ways and includes both anecdotes). As the king’s pyre bursts into flames at the novel’s conclusion, the sheer weight of conviction forces the reader into agreeing with Crouch’s assessment: for all that he lent his name to triumphs bought at exorbitantly high prices, Pyrrhus was a great man.

A meticulous recounting of Pyrrhus’ tumultuous final years, A PYRRHIC VICTORY (Volume III: Fate) by Ian Crouch offers a sympathetic portrayal of both the man and his times.

~Craig Jones, for IndieReader