“Byzantium”, by Stephen Lawhead

 

645 pages, Zondervan, ISBN-13: 978-0061092961

Stephen Lawhead’s Byzantium tells the tale of Aidan, a 10^th Century Irish monk sent to take the Book of Kells to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. During his quest he becomes separated from his fellow pilgrims and undergoes a variety of exotic adventures, from being captured and enslaved by Vikings, to engaging in political intrigue at the court of the Byzantine Empire and enslavement (again) in the caliph’s mines. Throughout it all his faith in God and Man are tested, and whether or not he comes to the end of his journey a better, bigger man – well, you’ll just have to find out, wontcha?

Byzantium is one of those books that, while I read it lo, many moons ago, has stayed with me ever since. The tense situations Aidan are thrown into time and again are well drawn and fairly exciting, especially the sea battle towards the end of the book, a battle that hums with energy and tension. Throughout each event, Aidan must rely on his wits and various abilities to stay alive and hope to complete the mission he set out on. Lawhead certainly has the ability to create intriguing set pieces, whether in a Danish festhall, an Arab palace, or the city of Constantinople itself. An excellent piece of historical fiction.

But there is more to it than that, for Byzantium is also a tale of a Christian man whose faith is tested time and again. As Aidan is tossed upon the seas of faith, his trust in God is likewise tossed about, and as he witnesses Man’s inhumanity towards Man, that faith becomes ever-more frayed until – to repeat myself, you’ll just have to find out, wontcha? It is to Lawhead’s credit that his writing never turns into preaching, and that his message is delivered with the subtlety of a brushstroke rather than of a sledgehammer. And Aidan’s encounter at the end of the book with the Viking who enslaved him at the beginning…there is no finer example of a Christian apologia in popular fiction.

So Byzantium is great historical fiction with a subtle Christian message that is all the more powerful for being so. It is also great entertainment that kept me engrossed the whole time I was reading it, a rare trifecta of literary skill that Lawhead should be applauded for.