Sean Gabb: The Break

Hodder & Stoughton, London

Hardback Edition: June 2010

Paperback Edition: February 2011

502pp

ISBN: 978-0340951163

The tears of Alexander shall flow, giving bread and freedom…

612 AD. Egypt, the jewel of the Roman Empire, seethes with unrest, as bread runs short and the Persians plot an invasion. In Alexandria, a city divided between Greeks and Egyptians by language, religion and far too few soldiers, the mummy of the Great Alexander, dead for nine hundred years, still has the power to calm the mob—or inflame it…

In this third novel of the series, Aelric of England has become the Lord Senator Alaric and the trusted Legate of the Emperor Heraclius. He’s now in Alexandria, to send Egypt’s harvest to Constantinople, and to force the unwilling Viceroy to give land to the peasants. But the city—with its factions and conspirators—thwarts him at every turn. And when an old enemy from Constantinople arrives, supposedly on a quest for a religious relic that could turn the course of the Persian war, he will have to use all his cunning, his charm and his talent for violence to survive.

“As always, Blake writes with immense historical and classical erudition, while displaying an ability to render 1500-year-old conversations in realistically colloquial English.”

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Hodder & Stoughton, London

Hardback Edition: June 2011

Paperback Edition: January 2012

432pp

ISBN: 978-1444709667

687 AD. Expansive and triumphant, the Caliphate has stripped Egypt and Syria from the Byzantine Empire. Farther and farther back, the formerly hegemonic Empire has been pushed—once to the very walls of its capital, Constantinople.

All that has saved it from destruction is the invention of Greek Fire. Is it a liquid? Is it a gas? Is it a gift from God or the Devil? Or is it a recipe found in an ancient tomb? Few know the answer. But all know how it has broken the Islamic advance and restored Byzantine control of the seas.

Yes, without this “miracle weapon,” Constantinople would have fallen in the 7th century, rather than the 15th, and the new barbarian kingdoms of Europe would have gone down one by one before the unstoppable cry of Allah al akbar!

But what importance has all this to old Aelric, now in his nineties, and a refugee from the Empire he’s spent his life holding together? No longer the Lord Senator Alaric, Brother Aelric is writing his memoirs in the remote wastes of northern England, and waiting patiently for death. For company, he has his student, Wilfred, sickly through bright, and Brother Joseph, another refugee from the Empire. Or there’s ghastly Brother Cuthbert to despise—or to envy for his possession of pretty young Edward.

Then a band of northern barbarians turns up outside the monastery—and then another. Almost before he can draw breath, Aelric is a prisoner and, with Edward, headed straight back into the snake pit of Mediterranean rivalries.

Who has snatched Aelric out of retirement, and why? What is the nature of Edward’s fascination with a man more than eighty years his senior? How, together, will they handle the confrontation that lies at the end of their journey—a confrontation that will settle the future of mankind?

Will age have robbed Aelric of his charm, his intelligence, his resourcefulness, or of his talent for cold and homicidal duplicity?

“As always, Blake’s plotting is as brilliantly devious as the mind of his sardonic and very earthy hero. This is a story of villainy that reels you in from its prosaic opening through a series of death-defying thrills and spills.”

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Hodder & Stoughton, London

Paperback Edition: April 2013

448pp

ISBN: 9781444709704

612 AD. No longer the glorious cradle of all art and science, Athens is a ruined provincial city in one of the Byzantine Empire’s less vital provinces. Why, then, has the Emperor diverted Aelric’s ship home from Egypt to send him here? Why has he included Priscus in the warrant? Surely, they have more important business in Constantinople. Isn’t Aelric needed to save the Empire’s finances, and Priscus to lead its armies against the Persians? Or has the Emperor decided to blame them for the bloodbath they presided over in Egypt?

Or could it be that Aelric’s latest job just to manage a council of Eastern and Western Bishops more inclined to kick each other to death than agree to a wildly controversial position on the Nature of Christ?

Hard to say. Impossible to say. When did Heraclius ever explain his reasons—assuming he had any in the first place? The only certainty is that Aelric finds himself in a derelict palace of dark and endless corridors and of rooms that Martin, his cowardly secretary, assures him pulse with an ancient evil.

Add to this a headless corpse, drained of its blood, a bizarre cult of the self-emasculated, embezzlement, a city rabble on the edge of revolution—and the approach of an army rumoured to contain twenty million starving barbarians.

Is Aelric on a high level mission to save the Empire? Or has he been set up to fail? Or is the truth even worse than he can at first imagine?

This fifth novel in the series blends historical fiction with gothic horror. Not surprisingly, Aelric may find even the vile Priscus a welcome ally. Or perhaps he won’t….

“It would be hard to over-praise this extraordinary series, a near-perfect blend of historical detail and atmosphere with the plot of a conspiracy thriller, vivid characters, high philosophy and vulgar comedy.”

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Hodder & Stoughton, London

Paperback Edition: August 2013

496pp

ISBN: 9781444709735

615 AD. A vengeful Persian tyrant prepares the final blow that will annihilate the Byzantine Empire.

Aelric of England—now the Lord Senator Alaric—is almost as powerful as the Emperor. Seemingly without opposition, he dominates the vast and morally bankrupt city of Constantinople. If, within his fortified palace, he revels in his books, his mood-altering substances, and the various delights of his serving girls and dancing boys, he alone is able to conceive and to push forward reforms that are the Empire’s only hope of survival, and perhaps of restoration to wealth and greatness.

But his domestic enemies are waiting for their moment to strike back. And the world’s most terrifying military machine is assembling in secret beyond the mountains of the eastern frontier.

What is the Horn of Babylon? Is it really accursed? Who is Antonia? What is Shahin, the bestial Persian admiral, doing on a ship within sight of the Imperial City? What exactly does Chosroes, the still more bestial Great King of Persia, want from Aelric? Is Rado a thuggish dancing boy or a military genius? Will Priscus, the vile and disgraced former Commander of the East, get his place in the history books? Must it be written in Aelric’s blood?

In this sixth novel in the series, can Aelric rise to his greatest challenge yet—and find a personal happiness that has so far eluded him?