A wonderful, gripping exploration of the bravest, most fantastic and outlandish journeys undertaken over the centuries -- regardless of whether they were possible or not!
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Stories drawn from 600 years of history, which are loosely described in the introduction as a collection of stories which encompass:
- attempted journeys to places that did not in fact exist;
- claims to have visited or seen such places;
- journeys it is no longer possible to make; and
- journeys that, whether in the planning, the execution, or the outcome, were implausible or unlikely, if not wholly impossible.
Which is quite a selection to wrangle.
The stories (24 of them) are all titled as to whose tale they are - The Friar's Tale, The Cannibal's Tale, The Amazons' Tales, the Merchants Tale, the Dancer's Tale, etc, etc, and each stories is either one persons story or various stories related to the topic.
As is typical for these collection style books, the stories are fairly hit and miss. The shorter ones appeal, although the longest (Ralegh and his search for Eldorado) is one of the better. Some were just too harder work - especially for me the first one (The Walker's Tale - Coryat's walk from Somerset to India) was a terrible starting story - overlong and lacking interest - in my view.
Overall though, readable and quirky, for the most part, with some skip-able chapters!
3 stars.
