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The Last King of Lydia Tim Leach Books

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The Last King of Lydia Tim Leach Books

A very quick read, aimed at a younger reader. Very little detail or emotion, not a bad read if you have nothing else around.


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The Last King of Lydia Tim Leach Books Reviews

Lydia, the Etrucan home land
Loved this book. Not you average historical fiction but very well written and interesting. He weaves the characters philosophy/ideas through the story effortlessly.
I like historical fiction so was committed to finishing this book, but the first few chapters were slow. It picked up thereafter. Lots of reviewers have called this a philosophical book, but it's more a story about one question than a book of ideas.

The setting, historical detail, and the array of characters are compelling, and the narrative isn't weighed down by excessive world-building the way some historical novels are. A lot of the energy of the book comes from the fascinating background material (from Herodotus) and of course the way it's told (most of the incidents were new to me). The one thing that would have improved the book is a more compelling delineation of the main characters and their action. Too often I found that Leach focused on building up characters and relationships through brief, weighty dialogue, but I found these passages wooden and unrevealing. Where the characters do well is in their response to dramatically changing circumstances, and the narrative is effective at depicting events as cruelly beyond almost anyone's control.

Clearly other reviewers like this book more than I did and I can see why. Leach is a good writer with a knack for finding human stories inside the broad material of history. I'll likely pick up the sequel, The King and the Slave, when it comes out.
Many reviewers seem to have liked this book (on the UK site at least), or even "loved" it, to use 's terminology. I did not, since I was looking for something historical as opposed to a semi-legendary philosophical tale that I found quite implausible.

Although it certainly does have a number of qualities, this is in fact a pseudo philosophical tale derived from Herodotus, portrayed as a piece of "historical fiction" and loosely based on the story of King Croesus, the last King of Lydia who lost it all (his wife, his kingdom, his riches and his freedom), to Cyrus, the founder of the Achaemenid Empire. The book collects together and expands upon a number of semi-legendary moralising Greek tales about fortune, fame, happiness, and their opposites.

The main philosophical tale is about what makes a man happy, based on a question that Croesus allegedly asked Solon, the elderly Athenian statesman visiting him. The book is supposed to demonstrate that Croesus, even when used and abused as a slave and after having lost just about everything, including his elder son, his wife and his personal pride, is far happier than when he was the all-mighty king of Lydia. This I found rather implausible, to put it mildly.

I also disliked the character of Croesus, whom I found utterly unsympathetic from beginning to end. He essentially appears as a spoilt, selfish and self-centred individual, even at the end when a slave. This again did not seem realistic to me. Before being overthrown by Cyrus, Croesus reigned for some fifteen years over Lydia which was at the time the major power in Asia Minor. Although his father does seem to have done much of the conquering and Croesus was perhaps more of an administrator than a soldier, it is difficult to believe that he was the kind of uncaring and rather useless whimp that is depicted in this book. It is also somewhat difficult to imagine Croesus the slave getting roughed up or worse and believing that he has never been so happy in his life.

The character of Cyrus is a bit more plausible. While Cyrus has come down to us as a paragon of tolerance given the mild way in which he treated those he conquered, it was clearly in his interest to do so as it made it so much easier to impose Persian dominance over the conquered kingdoms. In the book, however, he comes across as a cold, almost indifferent and somewhat inhuman conqueror. Initially, as Croesus is about to be executed, he clearly has little time to spare for his defeated enemy. The reason for his change of mind - what could have been Croesus' last words - did not appear convincing. Why would he even care about philosophy when too busy conquering and administrating an Empire for himself?

All in all, this book is a bit similar to "I am Cyrus" to the extent that it is a tale based on semi-legendary stories told about "great men". It is not really about history however. So, contrary to other reviewers, I would certainly not call this a piece of historical fiction.
The Last King of Lydia is a thoughtful, philosophical novel. Engaging things happen, but it is clear that the events are less important than what those events mean or how they can be interpreted.

Tim Leach has taken the Greek legend of Croesus, the extravagantly rich king of Lydia whose river, the Pactolus, flowed with gold, and retold it in a smart, meaning-laden manner that I enjoyed. This is a book that pursues the big questions, "What is the meaning of life?" "What makes a man truly happy and how can you tell he is happy?"

The philosophical tone is set early on when Solon, the famous wise man of Athens, comes to visit Croesus. Croesus asks Solon "Who is the happiest man you have ever met?" Croesus expects Solon to say he is, but in this Croesus is disappointed. It is the first of many disappointments. If nothing else, this tale proves the proverb that money can't buy happiness or wisdom. I think, if I've interpreted correctly, Leach suggests that life itself, the long stretch of days, might gain one or both of those but then again might not.

Leach builds for us the great cities of the Near East, Sardis and Babylon, as wondrous places. We march with armies, both in the company of their leaders and their slaves, and we live in palaces filled with unthinkable treasures and mundane daily life.

Cyrus, the Persian king who conquered a huge empire, has a major role. We gradually see what sort of a man can vanquish so many, choose so many destructive wars, and also leave behind a written legacy of religious tolerance that still stands out in a narrow-minded world. In some ways Cyrus can be seen as the inventor of the concept of leaving people alone to worship as they please "permissively plural," as Cyrus's theory is jokingly described by a slave in the novel. Cyrus is the king who allowed the Jews to return to Israel from their exile in Babylon and worship that zany notion of a single god, which quite excludes worshipping the great ruler.
Leach is good at both nuance and a cynicism that is cut with generosity and optimism. The world is neither dark nor light, but it is worth exploring. Leach lets us examine a distinctive ancient period of grand gestures and empires, as well as the individual wisdom of characters we come to know and, despite all their failings, admire.

Like any good philosopher, Leach doesn't answer the big questions he asks, but his exploration and hints are the more interesting as a result. I'll quote a few "goodies" that I found along the way and hope they'll hold up taken out of context. If you absolutely hate anything remotely like spoilers, you might want to stop reading now, although I don't think these will qualify as plot revealers. The book primarily philosophizes via action, events, and characters, not pithy comments, but there are such gems scattered through in a pleasant way
"We have gained a year where nothing will change. We will eat, do our work and sleep. ... what a gift that is. To be granted a year of this stillness. There will be no surprises to trap us into making any mistake. If I had my way, I would be happy to wait by this river for the rest of my life."

Or "He thought of how easily he and the others would be replaced. ... Barely had you stopped breathing before you became an irrelevance, as though you had never lived at all. What did anyone's life matter, king or soldier or slave, if they could be replaced in moments and the world go on without them?"

Or, to come to a quite different conclusion--though in a subtle manner
"`What is happiness to you then?' ...
Isocrates thought for a moment, then shrugged. `Eating a good pear with a sharp knife,' he said. `Making love to Maia, when she'll have me. Falling asleep with the sun on my face. Shall I go on?'
Croesus shook his head. `Sensation. Relief from pain. That's not enough.'
`It is enough for me. ... Would you like me to go?'
`Stay here, and watch the sunset with me,' Croesus said. `It might be a good one.'"

So here is to a good sunset to go along with this good book. Life is full of pleasures we shouldn't turn down just because we worry they aren't permanent or profound.
A very quick read, aimed at a younger reader. Very little detail or emotion, not a bad read if you have nothing else around.