C. C. Humphreys

It is 1536 and expert swordsman, Jean Rombaud, has been brought over from France by Henry VIII to behead his wife, Anne Boleyn. On the eve of her execution Rombaud swears a vow to the ill-fated queen, to bury her six-fingered hand at a crossroads in France. However, in a Europe ravaged by religious wars other powerful forces also want the hand for their own nefarious reasons. So when the he is attacked, left for dead and the hand taken by an Archbishop who witnessed the execution, Rombaud must battle against seemingly insurmountable odds to regain it and fulfil his promise. Rombaud accumulates a colourful assortment of displaced souls along the way equally determined to see him accomplish his goal. So begins a fight between good an evil.

Although this novel is set during the Tudor era, I was pleasantly surprised to discover that the main focus of the story was Jean Rombaud and isn't a simple retelling of that period's history. This is a swashbuckling adventure novel with plenty of fight scenes alongside numerous twists and turns with a touch of fantasy thrown in too.

Now I'm always a bit of a sucker for historical fiction and adventures stories in particular but whilst I really enjoyed the swashbuckling elements I felt that the plotting was a little bit off, it seemed overly long with much of the tale simply setting the scene for the next big battle scene rather than having any intrinsic value itself. This is a decent piece of escapism that runs along at a decent pace but nothing out of the ordinary for me.… (more)

This should be a book that I love. The fall of Constantinople was a pivotal part of history killing off the final vestiges of the Roman Empire This was an epic but essentially mediocre book.

The hero of the story was Greogas who had his nose cut off as punishment for being suspected of betraying the Constantinople before. He could have been a much more interesting character and I grew weary of his adventures. His ex-wife Sofia had the inner fire of a water bubble for most of the story and annoyed me to no end.

I do appreciate the story not painted as a story of good vs bad ... Turk vs Greek. And the author took to great lengths in the descriptions of crossbows and bows. The prologue was epic in a great way.

So it's an OK book about the fall of Constantinople .. but in the end, I much just prefer the They Might be Giants song about Constantinople.
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