C.C. Humphreyshandout
The problem with historical fiction is that we know how the story ends.
If a writer takes on a famous historical event, it's up to that writer to make it interesting through a strong writing style, the strength of the narrative and compelling characters. The author needs to make us forget that we already know the outcome.
In this endeavour, C.C. Humphreys largely succeeds.
A Place Called Armageddon is about the siege and capture of Constantinople by the Turks/Ottomans in 1453. The city was formerly the flower of the Byzantine Empire, the "Rome of the East" and a bastion of Orthodox Christianity; the Turks refer to it as the "Red Apple" and have long wanted to capture it. All other attempts to take the city have failed, but Mehmet, the new Sultan, at only 21, is determined to begin his reign with this victory.
Constantinople has, however, been decaying for years, and no longer retains its ancient glory. But Mehmet and his army of 100,000 still arrive to lay siege to the city, outnumbering the defenders 10 to one and leading to one of history's most epic battles, for one of the world's most famous cities.
Happily, Humphreys writes very strong battle scenes, so the reader is in good hands on this front. He also does a good job at giving us strong characters, some real (Mehmet, Sultan and leader of the Ottoman Turks; the Emperor Constantine XI; Giovanni Giustiniani Longo; and the Scotsman John Grant), and some fictional. So we can experience the battle and the siege from inside and outside. We get not just the action, but the human drama.
Another of the book's strengths is that the fear of the ordinary people is well-portrayed: the fear of a regular peasant foot soldier in Mehmet's army, who knows the odds of being killed are very great; the fear of those besieged within Constantinople, who know that if the Turks win, the very young and very old will be killed, the rest taken as slaves, and the women and children raped and then sold. (Mind you, this is not to suggest that the Turks were worse than anyone else. The Christian armies of the time did exactly the same amount of raping and pillaging.)
On the downside, there is literally a cast of thousands, and though Humphreys does focus on only a few characters, there are still enough points of view for the book to feel exhausting at times. The myriad protagonists become difficult to keep track of, especially when they are called different names by different people. Adding to the confusion, Humphreys sometimes shifts point of view rapidly, often from paragraph to paragraph, which can be highly disorienting. While it's good to get the point of view of both the sackers and the defenders, this leads to so many characters that we never really get too in-depth with any of them. There is sometimes the feeling that Humphreys wanted to cover as much ground as possible, leaving the whole feeling somewhat diffuse.
That said, Humphreys builds up the tension well, and mostly keeps the reader's interest – though at around the 45th day of the siege, one does start wondering how and when it will be over.
A few of the more fascinating parts of the book are the reasons Humphreys comes up with for certain unexplained (one assumes) historical events: His version of what happened to the Emperor Constantine at the end of the siege, and why one small church was saved, seems eminently plausible. Whether these are his own ideas or taken from various historians' speculations, they provide valuable historical and dramatic insight.
What's most intriguing, though, is the suggestion that the fall of Constantinople was actually a close call and might have gone the other way. The Turkish army and many of the Sultan's advisers wanted constantly to give up, and even with staggering odds against them, the Byzantine Greeks held the walls for nearly two months, all the while running low on ammunition and fuel, and with a populace living in terror.
Although Humphreys may not be the greatest prose stylist in the world, the energy of the book and the author's clear enthusiasm for the subject matter carry the day.
Brett Alexander Savory is a writer, editor and publisher. He is the author of In and Down, and co-publisher of ChiZine Publications