In this excellent book, Demetrios Bathrellos provides an admirably clear and precise guide through an intensely complex subject area. Bathrellos sheds light not only on the specific contribution of St Maximus to Orthodox Christology but also provides a very valuable survey treatment of the development of Christology up to the seventh century. This treatment is broadly traditional; there are no rehabilitations to be had here: Nestorians (including Nestorius) are Nestorian and Monophysites Monophysite. Similarly, various Christologies are assessed as less or more ‘satisfactory’ without our ever being told quite from which Olympian perspective such satisfaction can be determined. Moving on to the immediate background to the Monothelite Controversy, Bathrellos argues convincingly that Neo-Chalcedonianism, with its deep and determinative attachment to the Christology of St Cyril of Alexandria, was in no way a forerunner of Monothelitism. The heresy of the one will emerges, rather, as a kind of Neo-Apollinarianism in its denial of the integrity of Christ's human nature. Maximus himself is presented not only as a Neo-Chalcedonian but as an extreme example thereof – so much so that he can insist, with proper safeguards, on the Cyrilline (but of course actually Apollinarian) confession of the ‘one nature of God the Word incarnate’. Maximus is, of course, equally insistent on the Chalcedonian confession of the two natures of the one Christ. To deny human will is to deny Christ's humanity – hence a patent contradiction in terms of Maximus' ‘Chalcedonian logic’. Bathrellos brings out very clearly just how two wills do not entail, for Maximus, two willers. At Gethsemane, Christ willed as man to obey the Father (hence to obey his own divine will). The active subject in Christ is always the incarnate Logos. How this works in terms of choice is also ably dealt with, notably the thorny issue of the gnomic will which Maximus emphatically (at least in his later works) denies to Christ – choice (including the possibility of the ‘wrong’ choice) being seen as a function of the Fall. It would have been instructive to see a comparison with St Augustine made at this point. The Byzantine Christ ends with an intriguing discussion of the flaws, or at least potential flaws, of the Tome of Leo in the context of the Monothelite Controversy. The Tome, for Bathrellos, is overly symmetrical and risks suggesting two agents, hence two willers, in Christ. We are reminded at this point that the Tome was accepted at Chalcedon only by virtue of its perceived congruity with the teaching of Cyril. This perspective perhaps helps to explain the slightly regrettable title. To speak of the ‘Byzantine Christ’ undermines, to my mind, the universality of Maximus' Christology. Let us not forget that Maximus found refuge and active support in the Old Rome while being persecuted by the New Rome, Constantinople. And while Pope Honorius may have become enmeshed in Monothelitism, Pope Martin died, like Maximus, a confessor for the Dyothelite cause. It is also ironic, given the title, that Bathrellos tends to favour the formulations of the Lateran Council over those of the Sixth Ecumenical Council (Constantinople III) on essentially the same grounds of excessive symmetricality. Such considerations aside, this is an impressive work which helps to explain how a subject of such apparently ‘Byzantine’ intricacy could have become a matter, quite literally, of life and death.