A cautionary tale for people with literary ambitions

[Jona Lendering]

I couldn't resist to quote this line for you all:

"As the storm clouds of seeming Persian invincibility loomed ever darker over Ionia, so strange shadows from the past returned to haunt Athens, too."

Tom Holland's [amazon]Persian Fire[/amazon] is not a bad book, but if this is "a great stylist" (Victor Davis Hanson), I'm not optimistic about the future of literature. Three clichés in one sentence!