Reviews

River Kings: A New History of the Vikings from Scandanavia to the Silk Road by Cat Jarman

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parallax_kimchi's review against another edition

informative slow-paced

4.5

About as thorough and extensive a look at the Viking links from England to the Silk Road and all the steps between as you could hope for. Every so often I'd have a question about something raised or mentioned in the text, look it up, only for Jarman to answer exactly my question in a later paragraph in as much detail as I wanted.
The amount of detail she looks at the people that used these routes is also sublime, and often richly paints the then-contempary locations and activities vividly, alongside exhaustively researched accounts. There's a fair bit of necessary speculation, almost postulating, but this book has made me realise how much of our understanding of history (and especially viking history) often has had to be based on assumptions made from little physical evidence.
I'm not a big reader of non-fiction, but this definitely caught my attention and imagination throughout.

1outside's review against another edition

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3.0

I learned stuff, that's for sure but there was something about the writing style of the author that just didn't quite work for me.
It's more of a 3.5, but I'm rounding down because I just didn't quite enjoy it, despite the fact that it was very interesting.