A dashing professional spy takes on the enemies of the Byzantine Empire and discovers out of the question inventions like gunpowder and telescopes in an impressive romp from the maestro of alternate-history research fiction.

In another, very different timeline-one in which Mohammed embraced Christianity and Islam under no circumstances came to be-the Byzantine Empire still flourishes in the fourteenth century, and wondrous technologies are rising sooner than they did inside our own. Having dropped his family towards the ravages of about Agent of Byzantium smallpox, Basil Argyros provides made a decision to dedicate his life to Byzantium. A stalwart soldier and able secret agent, Basil acts his emperor courageously, going undercover to unearth Persia’s dastardly plots and disrupting the dark machinations of his gorgeous archenemy, the Persian spy Mirrane, while defusing dire dangers emerging through the Western realm from the Franco-Saxons. But the world Basil therefore staunchly defends can be changing rapidly, and he must stay ever vigilant, for within this great game of empires, the player who controls the most advanced tools and weaponry-tools like gunpowder, printing, vaccines, and telescopes-must certainly emerge victorious.

A assortment of interlocking stories that showcase the courage, ingenuity, and breathtaking derring-do of superspy Basil Argyros, Agent of Byzantium presents the great Harry Turtledove at his alternate-world-building best. At once intricate, interesting, witty, and wildly inventive, this is a many-faceted gem from a get good at from the genre.