The Long War Series [1-7] - Christian Cameron

Written by Christian Cameron
Read by Peter Noble
Format: M4B
Bitrate: Variable

A series that covers the whole of the Persian Wars from a first-person point of view, while deliberately playing with some of the reader’s perceptions of both history and the way that ‘adventure’ or ‘boy’s own’ genre fiction is written, follows in first person the life of Arimnestos

#1 Killer of Men

Arimnestos is a farm boy when war breaks out between the citizens of his native Plataea and their overbearing neighbours, Thebes. Standing in the battle line for the first time, alongside his father and brother, he shares in a famous and unlikely victory. But after being knocked unconscious in the melee, he awakes not a hero but a slave.
As he tries to make his fortune and revenge himself on the man who disinherited him, Arimnestos discovers that he has a talent that pays well in this new, violent world - for like his hero, Achilles, he is ‘a killer of men’.

#2 Marathon

To win his freedom he had to show that he could fight and kill. Now, to preserve that freedom, he must kill again.
For the Persians are coming. A vast army sent by King Darius to put down the rebellious Greeks and burn the city of Athens to the ground. Standing against them on the plain of Marathon is a much smaller force of Athenians, alongside their Plataean allies.

#3 Poseidon’s Spear

Sometimes, however, a man’s greatest triumph is followed by his greatest sorrow. Returning to his farm, Arimnestos finds that his wife Euphoria has died in childbirth, and in an instant his laurels turn to dust. But the gods are not finished with Arimnestos yet. With nothing left to live for, he throws himself from a cliff into the sea, only to be pulled by strong arms from death’s embrace. When he awakes, he finds himself chained to an oar in a Phoenician trireme.

#4 The Great King

There is a new Great King on the throne, determined to succeed where his father failed. As rumours abound of a vast Persian invasion, an embassy is sent to forestall the threat.
Arimnestos is chosen to escort them - an honour he can hardly refuse. But as the storm clouds of war gather and factions on both sides begin to weave their treacherous plots, Arimnestos’ journey begins to look more and more like a suicide mission.

#5 Salamis

As an experienced sea captain - his enemies might say pirate - he has a part to play in the final epic confrontation of the Long War between the Greeks and Persians, the Battle of Salamis. It is a battle where many debts of blood will be repaid, ancient grudges settled, fame won and treachery exposed, where the Greeks must finally bury their differences and fight as one - for against them Xerxes, the Great King, has assembled the greatest fleet the world has ever known, his sworn purpose to brutally extinguish the flame of freedom and make every Greek his slave.

#6 Rage of Ares

But even these stunning victories only served to buy the Greeks time, as the Persians gathered a new army, returning with overwhelming force to strike the final killing blow.
For the Greeks, divided and outnumbered, there was only one possible strategy: attack. And so, in the blazing summer of 479 BC, Arimnestos took up his spear at the Battle of Plataea.

#7 Treason of Sparta

When the dust settled and the blood dried after the Battle of Plataea, Greeks might have thought that their freedom was secured. But before the corpse of the Great King’s general was cold, Athens and Sparta began to bicker over dividing up the spoils.
Would the Spartans rather see Athens destroyed than Persia defeated? And who will save the cities of Ionia from the Great King’s wrath?
It’s the spring of 478 BCE, and the Long War isn’t over yet.

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