A review by nwhyte
Doctor Who: Byzantium! by Keith Topping

1.0

"http://nwhyte.livejournal.com/1252990.html[return][return]There are some aspects of this book that are so awful that I almost wanted to claw my eyes out. It is set in the city of Byzantium (the future Constantinople / Istanbul) in the first century AD. The city's population appears to be mainly Jewish (divided between Zealots, Christians and those in between), with a Greek minority and a settled Roman ruling class. It has minarets. Huge thudding mistakes and discrepancies abound in the Latin phrases (one recurring example - the senior Roman government official in the city lives in the villa praefectus). And the first century city has minarets. The presentation of characters' names is horrendously inconsistent - some are Latinised, some Grecianised, some Hebrew (or possibly Yiddish), and one who is called 'Fabulous' (sic). And he seems to think that there were minarets in the city before the Turkish conquest of 1453, and six centuries before the foundation of Islam. Even the transcription of the opening of St Mark's Gospel in Greek is incorrect, which is pretty astonishing as all you have to do is find a copy of Nestl