DrussA reader's guide to David Gemmell

Series · Two novels

The Macedon novels: Lion of Macedon and Dark Prince

Lion of Macedon and Dark Prince follow Parmenion, a real Macedonian general, through a largely invented life. In Gemmell's version he is half-Spartan, despised in Sparta as a mixed-blood, and becomes one of the finest tacticians in Greece and eventually general to Philip II of Macedon. The first book covers some three decades, from Sparta to Thebes and on to Macedon, and puts him close to real events such as the Theban overthrow of Spartan power.

It is historical fiction with a supernatural current. An old seeress, Tamis, has foreseen that Parmenion will be needed against a Dark God who threatens the world, and in Dark Prince that struggle centres on the young Alexander. The second book leans further into the fantastic, with Aristotle as a student of gateways between worlds, and many readers find the first the stronger of the two.

Are they part of the Stones of Power? In the story, yes: the Sipstrassi appear, the connection to the Arthurian and Jon Shannow books is made plain late in Lion of Macedon, and fan chronologies, including the one published on the Gemmell Awards website, put this pair first in the Sipstrassi sequence. But the printings do not group them that way. Orbit, his current British publisher, lists them as separate Ancient Greece novels, and the American Del Rey editions list them apart from the Stones of Power cycle.

They read perfectly well as a pair of their own, and you need nothing else to follow them. Read Lion of Macedon first. For readers who prefer history to fantasy it is one of the best ways into Gemmell, and it sits naturally beside the later Troy novels.

Reading order

Read Lion of Macedon first. Dark Prince continues directly.

  1. 1Lion of Macedon (1990)A despised half-Spartan grows into the finest general in Greece, while an old seeress shapes his life for a war against a dark god.
  2. 2Dark Prince (1991)The boy Alexander carries a dark god inside him, and Parmenion must follow him into a Greece of monsters where a demon king wants his heart.