Byzantine Fiction

A dashing master spy takes on the enemies of the Byzantine Empire and discovers impossible inventions like gunpowder and telescopes in a magnificent romp from the maestro of alternate-history science fiction.

It’s never been easy being a high schooler, and for four students stuck in detention, it’s about to get a whole lot harder. After opening a magical board game they find in a dark closet during detention, each is teleported to another world—the world of Byzantium. What’s worse: this place is in trouble. A slave rebellion has overrun entire cities, and barbarians from the east and west are on the march. On top of that, fantastic monsters and mystical warriors have joined the fray, throwing Byzantium into chaos.

In 1453 the collapse of Byzantine Orthodox Christianity's most sacred City, Constantinople, radiated shocks through the entirety of the Christian world. Symbolically, the Islamic Ottoman Turks had made Santa Sophia, the most famous Christian church in the world, into a mosque. Any doubts that there was a now an Ottoman Empire poised to conquer the Christian West were dispelled. But the history around the collapse itself was surrounded with loose ends and oddities.

Sophie Chattel-Monkheim was a socialist by conviction and a Chattel-Monkheim by marriage. When the Duke of Serbia does her the honour of joining her house party, despite her left-wing leanings, Sophie is determined to make a good impression. So she hires an emergency chef who is an expert in making Byzantine omelettes. Within a very short time the entire household is thrown into disarray....