Neil Blackman

Eve's husband has been killed in Afghanistan. She takes her young son to a Suffolk beach house on the edge of the North Sea to grieve. But someone else is in the house grieving her loss from another war.

An English mother and her teenage son spend a week preparing the sale of their remote holiday house in the South of France. Fifteen-year-old Elliot struggles with his dawning sexuality and an increasing alienation from his mother, Beatrice. She in turn is confronted by the realisation that her marriage to his father, Philip, has grown loveless and the life she knows is coming to an end. When an enigmatic local teenager, Clément, quietly enters their lives, both mother and son are compelled to confront their desires and, finally, each other.

前作で100万もの兵を率いてギリシャ侵攻を図るペルシャ帝国を相手に、300人の精鋭と共に戦いを繰り広げた果てに命を落としたスパルタのレオニダス王。今回の物語は灼熱の門で全滅したレオニダス達と同じ時間の別の戦い、エーゲ海での海戦を軸にしている。 アテナイのテミストクレス将軍は、パン屋、陶工、詩人といった一般市民から成るギリシャ連合軍を率いてペルシャ帝国海軍に立ち向かっていく。 ペルシャ帝国の海軍指揮官アルテミシアらと拮抗する中、ついに大海原を舞台にした最終決戦を迎えることに。