Byzantine Wars

A LitRPG Adventure

By: Ian Schwartz

Narrated by: Shanalee Carton

It’s never been easy being a high schooler, and for four students stuck in detention, it’s about to get a whole lot harder. After opening a magical board game they find in a dark closet during detention, each is teleported to another world—the world of Byzantium.

What’s worse: this place is in trouble. A slave rebellion has overrun entire cities, and barbarians from the east and west are on the march. On top of that, fantastic monsters and mystical warriors have joined the fray, throwing Byzantium into chaos. Our four high school students find themselves in four different bodies, taking four different sides in the conflict. Each must now fight desperately to survive.

Byzantine Wars is the first book in a complete trilogy: an historical fantasy isekai with LitRPG elements. Enjoy four different main characters with varying strengths and weaknesses, deeply immersive world-building, and endless humor and adventure. And, most importantly: don’t let the farr fade.

©2025 Ian Schwartz (P)2025 Ian Schwartz

Good concept, flawed execution, weird narration.

Bottom-line up-front: good idea, execution has some off-puttingly generic left-wing politics, narration is problematic at fast speeds and really hard to take at normal speed.

The good:
I bought this one because I loved the idea of a historically-based RPG. The author does a good job with the Byzantine aspects of the setting, in the sense of capturing the over-all feel of Byzantium's culture and politics. The factions are clear and well-laid-out, the plot makes sense, and the over-all story concept was good. If this were an RPG--instead of LitRPG--it would be playable.

The bad:

I'm not a fan of overt politics in my litRPG on either side. If it's a Trump-bash or a Trump-fest, it's not great escapism for me. If a reader is more tolerant of litRPG with a bit of a left slant, based on the point I reached (full disclosure, didn't complete), that's where it looks to be going. The invocation of Franz Fanon's Wretched of the Earth in the preview kind of indicated that was where we were headed with at least one character, but there are a lot of frankly stereotypical interpretations of American politics. Off-putting for me, but your milage may very.

The ugly:

So, I think the narrator might be new? The pacing in the sentences was weird, pronunciations were inconsistent throughout, and, while you can tell character voices apart, it was really hard to adjust to the pacing and cadence of speech.

Like I said, good concept, and if the politics were toned down and narration cleaned up I'd have enjoyed it. If you're coming to this looking for a good Byzantine fantasy, read the Belisarius saga, and for a historical Isakai, try Portal to Nova Roma.

not my cup of tea

great concept but the execution was lacking. basically Jumanji. the reader lacked range in my opinion and every one sounded the same. there was some political stuff in the book from the author and that was really the final straw for me. I want to be entertained not subjected to the authors political beliefs.