A review by carolhoggart
A Place Called Armageddon by C.C. Humphreys
3.0
Really, such a well-researched tale replete with so many interesting characters should get a rating of at least 4 stars. But I didn't finish this book. I made myself keep reading until exactly halfway, and then I gave up in relief. Why? The problem was not of the author's devising - it was the topic itself! Good fiction makes you care about its characters, or at least some of them. Humphreys made me care, and that was the very root of the problem. I knew full well that, after an epic siege and great loss of life, Constantinople would fall. I really couldn't bear to read on and 'witness' the horror through these characters' eyes. Silly me. It's only fiction, but I really should have thought before I picked up the book.
Just a tiny little historical grumble: p.73 shook my readerly trust in Humphreys as a historical novelist for two reasons 1) a character makes reference to a plant by means of its scientific Latin name, Pinus halepensis (the system of double-barreled Latin names wasn't invented until the 1700s!); and 2) he concludes the page by having the hero say, ominously for us readers with historical hindsight, "Welcome to 1453." This immediately rang a discordant note for me as the speaker of these words is Byzantine-educated and thus would think in an entirely different dating system! "Welcome to 6961 AM" definitely doesn't have the same dramatic effect ...
That said, historical novelists face an enormous challenge - providing a myriad of minute but historically accurate details to create verisimilitude. It's the rare historical novelist indeed who manages to avoid such pitfalls, and an impossible task entirely to evoke the past with absolute accuracy. Humphreys does a fine job in the main.
Just a tiny little historical grumble: p.73 shook my readerly trust in Humphreys as a historical novelist for two reasons 1) a character makes reference to a plant by means of its scientific Latin name, Pinus halepensis (the system of double-barreled Latin names wasn't invented until the 1700s!); and 2) he concludes the page by having the hero say, ominously for us readers with historical hindsight, "Welcome to 1453." This immediately rang a discordant note for me as the speaker of these words is Byzantine-educated and thus would think in an entirely different dating system! "Welcome to 6961 AM" definitely doesn't have the same dramatic effect ...
That said, historical novelists face an enormous challenge - providing a myriad of minute but historically accurate details to create verisimilitude. It's the rare historical novelist indeed who manages to avoid such pitfalls, and an impossible task entirely to evoke the past with absolute accuracy. Humphreys does a fine job in the main.