Travels in the Land of Serpents and Pearls

I was grossed out most of the time while reading this.. I just don't want to think of this book ever again lol

It was a quite interesting perspective, but I wasn't able to get much out of it because I did not know enough background information. I will return to this book after I've studied the context more. It was a nice little break, nice to delve into a historical source after all the fiction I've been reading and certainly an interesting window into another time and place.

This Penguin Little Black Classic is a selection of excerpts from Marco Polo's The Travels.
A very quick read - even for a LBC - this is a quite well selected collection.

There are some issues around the terrible repetition of certain phrases, and the two strange mentioning of himself in the third person - it is unclear to me whether this is a translation issue or just the painful way Polo presented his tales.

Once you can separate your self from that, the content is really quite interesting. Polo describes the great province of Maabar, and the five Kings (who are also brothers) of this province; the Kingdom to the north - Motupalli - ruled by a Queen. The province of Lar, west of Maabar, from which all Brahmins are ‘sprung', then we sidetrack to Sri Lanka for a tale Polo forgot to mention earlier in the book, and finally a few pages about the Kingdom of Gujarat.

Even in 55 pages, there is some repetition - situation the same or very similar in two different locations, and he unfortunately explains them in full a second time.

There are interesting parts - the methods of collecting the diamonds and gems, the religious beliefs and customs around various animals.

Four stars rounded down to three for the unnecessary repetition - something I seem to have brought through to my review - quite accidentally.