I like Polyainos's version much better than Renault's.

A LOT.

Also this--she appears to effect a glittering, meteoric rise, but the reader knows it is a doomed and contingent power--makes me think about history as spoiler in historical fiction.

I remarked to derspatchel either last night or the night before that reading Five Came Back was much more like a novel than my usual experience of reading history, because I knew so little about the lives of some of the subjects; I knew some of the films they would go on to make, but I didn't know how their personal experiences factored into them. I was blindsided by some of the things that happened to George Stevens and William Wyler. It's a very effectively written book.