24 HOURS IN THE VIKING WORLD

 

I realize I skipped over the volume before this, which was Ancient China. I think that one was the most dry so far, but still a good read. 

So I finally got around to reading the Viking book,  because one set in "Shogun's Japan" just came out. 

I have mixed feelings on this. 

It's a great read. I learned a lot. I like how she ends several chapters with what happened to the person after the chapter ended. The balance of characters was good. 

My biggest problem is that this author completely ignored the theme of this series. All the others took place over the course of ONE 24-hour time period. These chapters are all over the place, so this is not "a day in the life of the people who lived there," as the cover says. Some of these chapters are years apart! There is no real connect to any of them. A few have linked characters, which I like, but the Rome book especially showed how that should be done. This wasn't like that. I get that the author wanted to be in different locations, as the Viking World is far larger than Rome or Athens, but why ignore the hour theme? The other authors made the hour part of the story. She doesn't. 

All in all, this is an excellent book on Vikings and I loved aspects of it, but I would really like to know both why the author felt she was too good to keep to the point of the series and why the makers of this series even let her do that in the first place. It's the worst book in the series for that reason. 

24 Hours in Ancient Athens

Ah, I do love this series.

This most recent installment was written by the same author as the Roman volume, so it's well-written and very informative.

I think I enjoyed this one the least of the three. I'm not even sure why. The Egyptian one I liked, because of the subject matter and despite the terrible editing issues. The Roman one I enjoyed a lot. I enjoyed this, too, just...less so. Honestly, I can't even really say why.

Maybe it felt like the author was trying to cram too many historical people into a single day of life. It felt like constant name-dropping rather than an actual look at daily life. The chapters are nicely intertwined like the past books. You'll see the same people pop up a lot, especially Alcibiades. I swear he's mentioned or actually present in every other chapter.

The best thing is how many of the scenes are taken from actual ancient sources. It feels well-researched and well-written for what it is. I think I just would have preferred a few less big names and more regular people.

24 Hours in Ancient Rome

I actually came on here to do a completely different review, saw my last one for 24 Hours in Ancient Egypt, and realized I never did one for the Rome version.

Remember how I complained about the terrible lack of editing and the constant repetition in the Egypt book?

Not an issue here.

This author, who is a different person, doesn't constantly say "a couple of."

The chapters were even better tied together than the Egyptian ones. Quite impressively so. And the use of original source material was fabulous.

My only criticism of the book is that sometimes it gets a little textbooky and takes you out of the "day in the life" sense. While very informative, some of the chapters had so much factual detail that you forgot who the character was that you were supposed to be following along through that hour of the day. But that's a very minor criticism in comparison with what I had to say about the Egyptian book!

I am pleased to conclude that this same author will be tackling 24 Hours in Ancient Athens, which is the next book in this delightful series, due out on August 1st.

24 Hours in Ancient Egypt

I follow the Egyptian Museum on Facebook and they advertised this book. It sounded quite interesting, so I pre-ordered it on Amazon.

Within the first chapters, I knew I wanted to read this whole series, so I purchased the first book, set in Rome, and it's next on my reading pile.

A third, set in Greece, comes out in August.

The book is divided into 24 chapters, each representing an hour of the day. Each chapter focuses on a different character with a different job. So you get to meet: a midwife, the pharaoh, an embalmer, a retired soldier, a priest, a farmer, his wife, an overseer, a fisherman, a potter, a scribal student, a priestess, the vizier, a fan-bearer, the Great Royal Wife, a professional mourner, an architect, a carpenter, a brick-maker, an upper class housewife, a jeweler, a dancing girl, a physician, and a novice tomb robber. 


A lot of the characters are linked together. Sometimes this is in a literal sense. The chapter about the farmer is followed immediately by the chapter about his wife, and the fan-bearer's chapter follows the vizier's and continues the same story. Others are linked differently. The midwife is delivering the fisherman's child. The chapters on the embalmer, carpenter and mourner all have the same funeral. The scribal student is the physician's son. The dancer is the mourner's daughter (and a fellow professional mourner).

I really love this concept and the linked stories. They were well-told and fun.

However, the editing was TERRIBLE. The author kept tense-shifting and he LOVES the phrase "a couple of." Almost every chapter, if not every one, had at least one "a couple of." Like dude, you're writing fiction here. Just pick a fucking number or say "two."

From Chapter 2: "The startling crash that follows alerts a couple of guards, who pull back the chamber's curtains and rush in with a couple of lit lamps."

Even multiple times within the same sentence.

Stuff like that takes me out of the moment of the story and that was really disappointing. It was still a fun read overall. I've never read anything like it. But man, did this editor suck. If it was even edited at all!

The Roman and Greek books are written by a different author. I've read the introduction and one chapter of the Roman book, and it's much better so far.

I'd still recommend this as a good read, but I can't deny that it's also painful if you're used to better editing.