Blurb (from the jacket):
Fortune favors the bold...
They were an unstoppable force, hired to take the crown from the King of Persia. They were a fearless army of Greek soldiers, and one hundred thousand men fighting as one. They were led by the finest and most courageous generals in all of Greece. They were being led to unimaginable wealth, but that was days ago.
Now their leaders are dead and their army has scattered. Now their numbers have fallen to ten thousand and nothing remains but fear. Now they are men praying not for victory, but for the slim chance of living one more day.
Cut off by impassable terrain and pursued by an army of one million enemy soldiers; they must stand together to survive. To find their way home, one of their own must lead them. And to live one more day...
...they must fight.
My take on the book:
I was wondering whether the Campfire had generally hired the author of this book, Lwis Helfand. Because this is his second Graphic Novel from Campfire that I am reading out of three...
Take in the title - 400 BC - and the tagline - The story of the Ten Thousand. What is the basic idea that you form? Is it of a movie? A Hollywood movie, perhaps. The title is a number? Stars a Scottish star in the lead? A story of Spartans? Yeah! 300, it is!
I think author had gained the inspiration from the same movie. Greek soldiers. War. Half-clad army. Swords. Shields. Difficult names. The book has it all, only that it had a entirely different motivation. A war waged by a brother over his elder brother. The story is more about the army than the kings and their kingdoms.
Firstly, the innumerable cast of characters are pretty frustrating. Like it was depicted at the start of the novel, there are not just 5 main characters. They might be main, but best part of the novel has new difficult-to-remember, hard-to-pronounce Greek names, almost for every page.
Next the story was narrated with such suddenness that I felt lost from the very start. I had to read every dialogue cloud at least thrice to make some sense out of it.
And then the illustrations. They only made the story worse. The pictorial differences between the characters was very little and every character seemed every other character. Most of the times, it was a character talking to himself, or is it the other guy. It was impossible to fathom.
If you like this book, or in anyway related to the happening of this book, don't take me wrong. I am being this harsh because, I have not received this for book for reviewing, but have spent bucks on it. And it was so disappointing that I couldn't restrain myself from preventing the world from wasting bucks on it!
A total waste of time, money and energy...
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Title: 400 BC
Author: Lewis Helfand, Lalit Kumar Singh (Illustrator)
Tagline: The Story of the Ten Thousand
ISBN (edition I've read): 9789380028132
Rating:
Read between: 28-05-2014 (one day)
Publishers: Campfire Publishers
Pages: 68
MRP: ₹ 195
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