Byzantium

The bestselling author of the Pendragon Cycle now tells the story of Aidan, a 10th-century Irish monk sent to take the Book of Kells to the Byzantine Emperor in Constantinople. Separated from his fellow pilgrims, Aidan undergoes various exotic adventures, including capture by and life with Vikings, political intrigue in the Byzantine court, enslavement in a caliph's mine and loss of his all-important faith in God. Lawhead is a Christian writer, and here the Christian themes are integral and well developed; he also shows a keen and sympathetic eye for the values and cultures of non-Christians. Marketed as fantasy, the novel contains little overt supernatural content, although prayer is vital and dreams can be seen as omens. Still, the narrative has the excitement of a good fantasy novel, a vivid historical setting and a lengthy, credible and satisfying plot?just the elements, in fact, that have made Lawhead a commercial success time and again.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Young Aidan is blessed. He is one of a small band of Irish monks chosen to accompany a magnificent hand-painted manuscript--what we now know as the Book of Kells--across the sea to Byzantium. There the gift will be presented to the emperor, who will then be predisposed to hear of the difficulties facing the Irish church. But before reaching landfall in Brittany, the monks' coracle is set upon by Viking raiders who capture Aidan and take him into slavery in their northern homeland. And the Book? It survives, of course, and Aidan is finally able to fulfill his quest. But a Viking raid on Byzantium, an expedition to the Holy Land, imprisonment in a desert prison-mine, wars at sea, and yet more adventures come before the monk's commission is discharged. Not merely a gripping yarn--and it certainly is that--this is also a novel about faith and the tests life plants in its way. Lawhead, author of the popular Pendragon cycle of fantasies, here makes a sure move into mainstream historical fiction. Patricia Monaghan