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The Break
This novel is a right-wing satirical fantasy set in the near future. Imagine :
Our own modern England – a land of disarmed and moronised citizen-serfs, tyrannised over by a crumbling police state – has been lifted straight out of the present and dropped into the world of 1065.
In mainland Great Britain and three hundred yards all about, it’s business as usual. Or it’s business as usual if you ignore the third of the population that has starved to death or been murdered by the authorities; and if you overlook endemic shortages, and trigger-happy police, and omnipresent propaganda. Oh, but this is the new business as usual – the business as usual arguably deserved by the sheeple who have survived.
Outside this happy zone, it’s 1065. Normans. Lords in their castles. The Catholic Church. Everyone is watching. Everyone is mindful of the vast new power dropped unaccountably where the land of King Edward had been. Though with weaker firepower, everyone is more intelligent and resourceful than the enfeebled slaves dropped into this new world.
The story is told through the eyes of two main characters. There is Jennifer , a young English girl whose parents were running a smuggling racket into France before they were lifted. There is Michael , part of a Byzantine diplomatic mission sent over to spy out any help for their crumbling empire. They are brought together by apparently chance events. Together, they must stay alive while taking on an insanely villainous British Government.
It’s an odd sort of novel, no doubt. And it was written before Brexit or the Coronavirus panic or the Ukraine War. Even so, there are enough reviews underneath this blurb for you to decide for yourselves if this is the sort of novel you’ll enjoy. All I can add is this comment from some swinish agent who refused to offer the book to one of the increasingly useless “I’ll never pass through Oxford Circus again without a shudder.”
Praise for Other Novels by Sean Gabb (Writing as “Richard Blake”)
“Fascinating to read, very well written, an intriguing plot and I enjoyed it very much.” (Derek Jacobi, star of I Claudius and Gladiator)
“Vivid characters, devious plotting and buckets of gore are enhanced by his unfamiliar choice of period…. Nasty, fun and educational.” (The Daily Telegraph)
“He knows how to deliver a fast-paced story and his grasp of the period is impressively detailed.” (The Mail on Sunday)
“A rollicking and raunchy read . . . Anyone who enjoys their history with large dollops of action, sex, intrigue and, above all, fun will absolutely love this novel.” (Historical Novels)
“It would be hard to over-praise this extraordinary series, a near-perfect blend of historical detail and atmosphere with the plot of a conspiracy thriller, vivid characters, high philosophy and vulgar comedy.” (The Morning Star)
Sean Gabb is a writer and Classics teacher. He lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.
Our own modern England – a land of disarmed and moronised citizen-serfs, tyrannised over by a crumbling police state – has been lifted straight out of the present and dropped into the world of 1065.
In mainland Great Britain and three hundred yards all about, it’s business as usual. Or it’s business as usual if you ignore the third of the population that has starved to death or been murdered by the authorities; and if you overlook endemic shortages, and trigger-happy police, and omnipresent propaganda. Oh, but this is the new business as usual – the business as usual arguably deserved by the sheeple who have survived.
Outside this happy zone, it’s 1065. Normans. Lords in their castles. The Catholic Church. Everyone is watching. Everyone is mindful of the vast new power dropped unaccountably where the land of King Edward had been. Though with weaker firepower, everyone is more intelligent and resourceful than the enfeebled slaves dropped into this new world.
The story is told through the eyes of two main characters. There is Jennifer , a young English girl whose parents were running a smuggling racket into France before they were lifted. There is Michael , part of a Byzantine diplomatic mission sent over to spy out any help for their crumbling empire. They are brought together by apparently chance events. Together, they must stay alive while taking on an insanely villainous British Government.
It’s an odd sort of novel, no doubt. And it was written before Brexit or the Coronavirus panic or the Ukraine War. Even so, there are enough reviews underneath this blurb for you to decide for yourselves if this is the sort of novel you’ll enjoy. All I can add is this comment from some swinish agent who refused to offer the book to one of the increasingly useless “I’ll never pass through Oxford Circus again without a shudder.”
Praise for Other Novels by Sean Gabb (Writing as “Richard Blake”)
“Fascinating to read, very well written, an intriguing plot and I enjoyed it very much.” (Derek Jacobi, star of I Claudius and Gladiator)
“Vivid characters, devious plotting and buckets of gore are enhanced by his unfamiliar choice of period…. Nasty, fun and educational.” (The Daily Telegraph)
“He knows how to deliver a fast-paced story and his grasp of the period is impressively detailed.” (The Mail on Sunday)
“A rollicking and raunchy read . . . Anyone who enjoys their history with large dollops of action, sex, intrigue and, above all, fun will absolutely love this novel.” (Historical Novels)
“It would be hard to over-praise this extraordinary series, a near-perfect blend of historical detail and atmosphere with the plot of a conspiracy thriller, vivid characters, high philosophy and vulgar comedy.” (The Morning Star)
Sean Gabb is a writer and Classics teacher. He lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.
293 pages, Paperback
First published May 29, 2014
About the author
Sean Gabb
78 books35 followersSean Gabb is the author of twenty books and around five hundred essays.
Under the name Richard Blake, he has written six historical novels for Hodder & Stoughton. These have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, Slovak, Hungarian, Chinese and Indonesian.
Under his own name, he has written four novels. His other books are mainly about libertarian politics.
He is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance, a human rights and educational charity based in the United Kingdom.
He also teaches. His main experience has been in higher education. More recently, though, he has discovered a talent for teaching Latin to primary school children. This is a talent he intends to develop.
He lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.
Under the name Richard Blake, he has written six historical novels for Hodder & Stoughton. These have been translated into Spanish, Italian, Greek, Slovak, Hungarian, Chinese and Indonesian.
Under his own name, he has written four novels. His other books are mainly about libertarian politics.
He is the Director of the Libertarian Alliance, a human rights and educational charity based in the United Kingdom.
He also teaches. His main experience has been in higher education. More recently, though, he has discovered a talent for teaching Latin to primary school children. This is a talent he intends to develop.
He lives in Kent with his wife and daughter.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
July 13, 2014
Here is Robert Groezinger's Review:
Is the Past the Future?
By Robert Groezinger
July 5, 2014
Imagine waking up one day and discovering that, although your country has not changed, the rest of the world has. You find that while your immediate surroundings have not altered, everything outside your country has inexplicably reverted to a time of about a millennium ago.
This is the setting of Sean Gabb’s new novel The Break: In the year 2017, after days of violent storms, which ground all planes and force all ships into harbour, modern Britain, with all its cars, TVs, smartphones, CCTV cameras, unaccountable police and militant political correctness, finds itself surrounded by a world which considers the year to be AD 1064. The cities of mainland Europe have disappeared or contracted to clusters of a few thousand thatched houses. Roads, railway lines and canals have all vanished. The rest of the continent consists mainly of forest and other uncultivated land. Further south, the Byzantine Empire is still going strong – just. The great schism that split the early church into an eastern Orthodox and western Catholic branch happened only 10 years previously. And the Normans have yet to invade England.
The Break is a gripping tale. Full of mystery, suspense, terror, action, heroism, evil connivance and romance. But it is much more than that.
There are legions of science fiction novels in which an individual or small group is somehow channelled into another world and/or another time. But for a whole nation to suddenly find itself thus transported, that is rare. Maybe even unique. How this ‘break’ has happened is only hinted at, never fully explained. This is immaterial however, because Gabb’s setting allows him to turn his dystopian novel into a brilliant political allegory, satire, polemic and warning. The author of nine – for the most part – historical novels, who also happens to be the director of the United Kingdom Libertarian Alliance, is thereby following the glorious tradition of his fellow countrymen Jonathan Swift, George Orwell and C.S. Lewis.
The Break is a warning because transporting modern Britain into medieval times is basically equivalent to any modern, highly developed country suddenly finding itself in a world where the international division of labour has broken down. Equivalent therefore to what might happen any time now in developed countries if, say, the monetary system broke down more completely than in 2008. That is to say: If, which is likely, at the same time the government prevented a transition to a natural monetary order based on real value. The results would be nothing short of catastrophic. In the Britain of The Break, thousands, if not millions die of hunger and disease, and in the general violence that ensues once the shops have run out of supplies. The corpses need to be piled into huge mounds around the country. Many survivors have to work the soil simply in order to live. Freeways become oversized walkways. Big cities like London almost suffocate in smog. Some people revert to cannibalism. Inevitable riots are broken up by helicopter gunships. Muslim suicide bombers in Oxford Street add to the generally apocalyptic vision that Gabb paints for us.
In this dislocated and traumatised Britain we meet 16-year-old Jennifer. After the ‘break’, her parents had started a successful business smuggling modern amenities such as tampons and paracetamol across the English Channel to the Normans and Flemish in exchange for silver and gold. The girl has probably been homeschooled, because she already knows enough Latin to talk fluently with medieval acquaintances. But now her parents have mysteriously disappeared, possibly abducted by the British government. In her desperate search for them, Jennifer follows clues that lead her ever closer to a dark and dangerous conspiracy that somehow seems connected to the weird condition her world is now in.
Another character who appears on the scene is Michael, a young emissary from Constantinople. His homeland is under pressure from both Saracens and Turks: Muslim forces pushing north and west into the Byzantine realm. He hopes to gain support from this new, strange and powerful Britain that has suddenly replaced the backwater ex-outpost of the sunken Western Roman Empire. It is an intriguing juxtaposition that Gabb makes here: Modern Britain, a country that has recently lost its empire, is now in a position to help another empire which is in danger of dying – an empire which for centuries had prevented forces from the Orient from entering Europe, allowing, as Gabb tells us, Western civilisation to prosper. Whether one agrees with him nor not, this is entertainment on a high intellectual level.
No less entertaining is Gabb’s description of the measures the government takes to manage the task of re-establishing its preferred version of internal order. Shockingly (or perhaps not), all he needs to do is slightly exaggerate what his government is doing anyway in real life. Basically, any pretence of democracy and freedom is abandoned in favour of outright tyranny. There is obfuscation in the regime media: no one can deny that modern Britain has been placed into medieval times, but no one in power admits it either. The return to normality is just around the corner, they say. Bureaucracy is inept and out of control. Amusingly, while the government is trying to find its country’s place in the new (i.e. old) world, it insists on what is now completely anachronistic political correctness.
Why does the government choose this mode of action? One of the characters allows us an insight into the author’s thinking: “They’ll never give up control. They’ve finally got the police state they always wanted, and they’ll restrain any urges to world conquest until they’ve broken us to unthinking obedience.” Gabb is never more scathing and penetrating in his critique of corrupt state villainy than when he exposes the narcissism at the heart of the evil power-grab on which his story hinges. And this is not just about Britain. Rather surprisingly, the United States federal government has a role to play in the climax of Gabb’s dystopia. You’ll have to read it though to find out in what way.
The Break enables us to observe our modern civilization from a medieval perspective. Again, these observations are often surprising and thought-provoking. As when Michael, the Byzantine protagonist, thinks that “this house, so far as he could see, was a single block, with glazed windows on every side. England must long have been a very safe country if the rich could trust themselves in the like.” The reader then finds himself thinking: How much longer will we still be safe in unfortified houses such as these? Especially (in particular in the case of Britain) if normal, law-abiding people are unarmed?
In some other respects, to the man from Constantinople the modern world seems to have reverted to much older and barbaric ways. From Michael’s point of view our current ‘liberated’ approach to sex is nothing but a re-establishment of the “Old Faith” (of ancient Greece and Rome before Christianity) and a bikini-clad woman in a holiday resort advert appears to him to be “a dancing prostitute”.
Speaking of which, it is noteworthy that in this novel Gabb refrains from graphic descriptions of sex and debauchery. They are of course hinted at – the depiction of a nation in terminal decline would not be complete without them. But the author does not insult his readers’ intelligence by joining the ranks of today’s many authors who, following what they deem to be the Zeitgeist, liberally spread written triggers of libidinous Pavlovian reflexes. Gabb does not need them to keep his readers engaged.
The Break is a thrilling masterpiece by an experienced and established novelist. At the same time it is an unsparing and consummate exposition and critique of our modern so-called civilization. I have read all of Gabb’s novels. They are all good, but this one is his best so far. Apparently, it’s been nominated for the Prometheus Award. I’m not surprised.
Is the Past the Future?
By Robert Groezinger
July 5, 2014
Imagine waking up one day and discovering that, although your country has not changed, the rest of the world has. You find that while your immediate surroundings have not altered, everything outside your country has inexplicably reverted to a time of about a millennium ago.
This is the setting of Sean Gabb’s new novel The Break: In the year 2017, after days of violent storms, which ground all planes and force all ships into harbour, modern Britain, with all its cars, TVs, smartphones, CCTV cameras, unaccountable police and militant political correctness, finds itself surrounded by a world which considers the year to be AD 1064. The cities of mainland Europe have disappeared or contracted to clusters of a few thousand thatched houses. Roads, railway lines and canals have all vanished. The rest of the continent consists mainly of forest and other uncultivated land. Further south, the Byzantine Empire is still going strong – just. The great schism that split the early church into an eastern Orthodox and western Catholic branch happened only 10 years previously. And the Normans have yet to invade England.
The Break is a gripping tale. Full of mystery, suspense, terror, action, heroism, evil connivance and romance. But it is much more than that.
There are legions of science fiction novels in which an individual or small group is somehow channelled into another world and/or another time. But for a whole nation to suddenly find itself thus transported, that is rare. Maybe even unique. How this ‘break’ has happened is only hinted at, never fully explained. This is immaterial however, because Gabb’s setting allows him to turn his dystopian novel into a brilliant political allegory, satire, polemic and warning. The author of nine – for the most part – historical novels, who also happens to be the director of the United Kingdom Libertarian Alliance, is thereby following the glorious tradition of his fellow countrymen Jonathan Swift, George Orwell and C.S. Lewis.
The Break is a warning because transporting modern Britain into medieval times is basically equivalent to any modern, highly developed country suddenly finding itself in a world where the international division of labour has broken down. Equivalent therefore to what might happen any time now in developed countries if, say, the monetary system broke down more completely than in 2008. That is to say: If, which is likely, at the same time the government prevented a transition to a natural monetary order based on real value. The results would be nothing short of catastrophic. In the Britain of The Break, thousands, if not millions die of hunger and disease, and in the general violence that ensues once the shops have run out of supplies. The corpses need to be piled into huge mounds around the country. Many survivors have to work the soil simply in order to live. Freeways become oversized walkways. Big cities like London almost suffocate in smog. Some people revert to cannibalism. Inevitable riots are broken up by helicopter gunships. Muslim suicide bombers in Oxford Street add to the generally apocalyptic vision that Gabb paints for us.
In this dislocated and traumatised Britain we meet 16-year-old Jennifer. After the ‘break’, her parents had started a successful business smuggling modern amenities such as tampons and paracetamol across the English Channel to the Normans and Flemish in exchange for silver and gold. The girl has probably been homeschooled, because she already knows enough Latin to talk fluently with medieval acquaintances. But now her parents have mysteriously disappeared, possibly abducted by the British government. In her desperate search for them, Jennifer follows clues that lead her ever closer to a dark and dangerous conspiracy that somehow seems connected to the weird condition her world is now in.
Another character who appears on the scene is Michael, a young emissary from Constantinople. His homeland is under pressure from both Saracens and Turks: Muslim forces pushing north and west into the Byzantine realm. He hopes to gain support from this new, strange and powerful Britain that has suddenly replaced the backwater ex-outpost of the sunken Western Roman Empire. It is an intriguing juxtaposition that Gabb makes here: Modern Britain, a country that has recently lost its empire, is now in a position to help another empire which is in danger of dying – an empire which for centuries had prevented forces from the Orient from entering Europe, allowing, as Gabb tells us, Western civilisation to prosper. Whether one agrees with him nor not, this is entertainment on a high intellectual level.
No less entertaining is Gabb’s description of the measures the government takes to manage the task of re-establishing its preferred version of internal order. Shockingly (or perhaps not), all he needs to do is slightly exaggerate what his government is doing anyway in real life. Basically, any pretence of democracy and freedom is abandoned in favour of outright tyranny. There is obfuscation in the regime media: no one can deny that modern Britain has been placed into medieval times, but no one in power admits it either. The return to normality is just around the corner, they say. Bureaucracy is inept and out of control. Amusingly, while the government is trying to find its country’s place in the new (i.e. old) world, it insists on what is now completely anachronistic political correctness.
Why does the government choose this mode of action? One of the characters allows us an insight into the author’s thinking: “They’ll never give up control. They’ve finally got the police state they always wanted, and they’ll restrain any urges to world conquest until they’ve broken us to unthinking obedience.” Gabb is never more scathing and penetrating in his critique of corrupt state villainy than when he exposes the narcissism at the heart of the evil power-grab on which his story hinges. And this is not just about Britain. Rather surprisingly, the United States federal government has a role to play in the climax of Gabb’s dystopia. You’ll have to read it though to find out in what way.
The Break enables us to observe our modern civilization from a medieval perspective. Again, these observations are often surprising and thought-provoking. As when Michael, the Byzantine protagonist, thinks that “this house, so far as he could see, was a single block, with glazed windows on every side. England must long have been a very safe country if the rich could trust themselves in the like.” The reader then finds himself thinking: How much longer will we still be safe in unfortified houses such as these? Especially (in particular in the case of Britain) if normal, law-abiding people are unarmed?
In some other respects, to the man from Constantinople the modern world seems to have reverted to much older and barbaric ways. From Michael’s point of view our current ‘liberated’ approach to sex is nothing but a re-establishment of the “Old Faith” (of ancient Greece and Rome before Christianity) and a bikini-clad woman in a holiday resort advert appears to him to be “a dancing prostitute”.
Speaking of which, it is noteworthy that in this novel Gabb refrains from graphic descriptions of sex and debauchery. They are of course hinted at – the depiction of a nation in terminal decline would not be complete without them. But the author does not insult his readers’ intelligence by joining the ranks of today’s many authors who, following what they deem to be the Zeitgeist, liberally spread written triggers of libidinous Pavlovian reflexes. Gabb does not need them to keep his readers engaged.
The Break is a thrilling masterpiece by an experienced and established novelist. At the same time it is an unsparing and consummate exposition and critique of our modern so-called civilization. I have read all of Gabb’s novels. They are all good, but this one is his best so far. Apparently, it’s been nominated for the Prometheus Award. I’m not surprised.
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