The Golden Mean

by Annabel Lyon

Reviewed by Coral

While in Macedon, delivering a message to King Philip of Macedon, Aristotle finds himself unexpectedly asked to become the tutor to Prince Alexander. But to turn this boy into a king, he will have to content with jealous teachers, a paranoid mother and Alexander’s stubborn pride.

I enjoyed this book for the most part, but I felt like it either needed to be longer or to go deeper into the subject matter. There were a lot of characters that never really felt fleshed out completely, including Plato, Alexander, Hephaestion, Ptolemy and Olympias.

Instead of jumping back in time for a couple of chapters to see Aristotle’s early life, I wish we could have spent more time there, getting to know Plato as a character. And this brief summary really glossed over Philip’s own ascension to the throne, which I would have liked to read.

I thought that the book could have had an interesting Alexander, who seemed to be suffering from some kind of traumatic stress disorder, but because Aristotle’s interaction with Alexander was limited in his later life (during his early years as a soldier before becoming king) we don’t really have a lot of time to explore that.

It seems like too much was passed over too quickly.

Grade: B