2,5/5 (4/10)

Okay, this author isn't for me. It's a case of "it's not you, it's me." And I have three problems with this book; two serious ones—for me—and one minor one:

1. The writing style
2. The characters
3. The setting

Let's start with the writing style. It's what made me not enjoy this book at all. I don't like the way the author chose to tell the story: it feels like a group of men sitting in a bar, and one of them starts explaining how he won over a stunning woman, but it's all fake, and he's just bragging to his friends. The humor, if it even exists, isn't for me; I didn't laugh once because I didn't find the humor that many people mention in their reviews (maybe it's just me, I suppose). The use of 21st-century terminology in a historical context like the Siege of Constantinople also made it difficult for me to enjoy the book (yes, that's important to me). It felt like a child of this century telling their father what they did in a video game set in a medieval fantasy world. It also had an impact—and this is objectively criticized—when the author employed what I call "metastory"; when the author makes a character—in this case, the enemy—know information they couldn't possibly know unless they were actually there (which they weren't) or unless God revealed it to them (“God” as "the author").

Let's move on to the characters. I don't like them. I don't find them charismatic, likeable, attractive (I'm not talking about beauty), or funny. Especially the protagonist. I'm a reader who needs to like the characters, and no, they don't have to be good people, but they do have to be charismatic. And for me, these characters weren't. When the enemy reveals himself to the protagonist, it became clear to me that the book is a parody. Like when you put an engineer, a bridge builder, as the absolute boss of the place. What the hell? Since when does a bridge builder, who even says he's NOT a soldier, know more about military strategy than the Empire's military strategists?

And finally, the setting. And here I'm going to be completely subjective. I'm a reader who's in love with Sarantium, which is Guy Gavriel Kay's Byzantine Empire. I cried reading about its fall (not a spoiler, since the real one fell too). The way the Byzantine Empire is treated in GGK is so beautiful, so lovely, with such respect, that reading this book and seeing how it treats it more as a joke felt like a lack of respect for what that great Empire represented in its time and in the collective memory and history of Humanity. Aside from that, it's true that I didn't really get my bearings in the story until I read "Mosaics" and "Blues” and “Greens", since there's neither a map nor any guide to indicate that we're witnessing the siege of Constantinople. The author starts mentioning the names of mountains, places, rivers, and people that allude to real things, but he changes their names, and since there's no guide to anything, you have no idea what he's referring to. It's confusing.

Now, I have to say that, unlike many, I liked the ending. It's realistic given what's happening. It's the fall of Constantinople; it couldn't end well.