"A Place Called Armageddon".. a review..

CC Humphreys may be better known amongst the wargaming fraternity for his Jack Absolute books "rogue, duellist, charmer and Captain in the Light Dragoons", and set in the American War of Independence...  highly recommended by the way, but this book is something entirely different.... 😏

 The tale is set at the time of the Fall of Constantinople to the Turks in 1453..  there are a number of characters in the story, and one of the things I liked most about it was that Humphrey's has picked them from both sides of the conflict to carry the story, very few of them are unpleasant and they each have an interesting back story that makes you empathise with why they  happen to be fighting each other, and with the conflicting aim of capturing the last "Roman" city of Constantinople...

On the Christian side (since the conflict was one of Christian versus Moslem) we have have Genoese and Venetian mercenary's, the inhabitants of the city (nominally "Roman" but in fact mostly Greek); there is bickering, religious in-fighting (between the Pope and Rome representing the mainstream West of Europe, and the Orthodox Church of the East), Genoese are at loggerheads with Venetians (both huge trading nations in the Mediterranean) and over all - like some medieval Eisenhower holding them all together is the Emperor Constantine

On the Turkish side there is the young Sultan, Mehmet - who faces the same challenges - a largely conservative, older, court trying to restrain him from what they see as a pointless and fruitless exercise (as Constantinople has resisted half a dozen sieges over the years - and they don't see how this can be any different). We have bashi bazouks, ghazi's, janissaries, Italian mercenaries, a massive Turkish gun, a search for the missing ingredients of Greek fire in order to assist the defenders, sea battles...  you name it.

A brilliant read..  Steve the Wargamer recommends it highly - 9 out of 10...

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Bear with me... I have the end of the second Operation Cornichon game to complete a post on, and also a review of Salute (brilliant day out) which DG and I attended yesterday...