Oh, my! I'd love to read a more even-handed treatment of the same journey. What puzzles me too is how on Earth he conducted his multiple in-depth interviews, recording innermost outpourings of the Russians from all walks of life, while not speaking the language? Make no mistake - only a handful of people he talked to commanded some degree of fluency. His profile at The Economist says he speaks English, French and German. No Russian or Chinese whatsoever.

The way he treated the material makes it a valuable anti-Russian propaganda piece. All is filth, greed, hate, decrepitude, drunkenness, etc. Vast majority of warm and compassionate words are addressed to the wildlife of the area and somewhat grudgingly to China, when compared to Russia.

Don't take me wrong, I'm not an apologetic of Russian chauvinism or Putin, but this work could be vividly contrasted with another book I'm reading at the moment, the one that covers another much maligned Russian misdeed - 'Afghan' by Sir Roderic Braithwaite. He deals with a far more controversial topic, yet manages to produce an unbiased narrative, finding bad and good in actions of all sides, even tangentially involved in the conflict. Not that he forcefully balances good with evils, but he tries to be objective: he calls sadists sadists, but he never slaps labels and cliches left and right. Being able not to ride through on a high moral horse is apparently a talent not everyone's born with.

I gave it 3 stars mostly for driving attention to this God forsaken region. It's a unique and beautiful area, rich in wildlife and cultures. ( )

A bunch of history from a faraway part of the world we don't generally hear so much about here in the west. Ziegler knows his topic and does a pretty good job of spicing it up along the way. Even so, I eventually got a bit muddled about which Cosack had done what. ( )

The Black Dragon River has a long history, reaching as far back as Genghis Khan and the Mongolian empire around 1000 years ago. This was the beginning of its tumultuous history of conflict and war that has lasted pretty much until the present day. Also called the Amur, it is a river that I had never heard of until I picked this book up. Turns out it is the world’s ninth longest and forms part of the border between Russia and China and has been a focal point for each country’s expansion plans over the years. It has seen more than it fair share of death and destruction from both sides

Ziegler begins his journey along the river as Khan would have done, on a horse, from the Mongolian steppe into the taiga to what is thought to be the source of the river. His journey along the river is not always easy so he is forced to take the Trans-Siberian Railway through a valley of water meadows. He does return to the river and the people and places along it, but it almost seems to be a aside. I was hoping this was going to be a fascinating travel book about a relatively unknown part of the world, but sadly there was much more history than travel, and this is a place that has had a lot of brutal events happen. Not bad, but not great. ( )

Joy's review: Ziegler describes a trip on and around the Amur River including a sweeping and detailed history of the area. It's a very interesting history and area, but unfortunately, Ziegler does a poor job of writing about it. I found his narrative structure weak to non existent which made following his often convoluted sentences even more difficult. I was expecting a lot more from a reporter for the Economist. ( )

By the time that the narrative of this travelogue comes into focus it turned out not to be the book I was expecting. From the way it starts I was expecting more of a natural history study. What you really wind up with is a meditation on the rise and fall of Russian dreams of empire in the Far East, with the question being whether the shabby present is just a portal to a new age of Chinese expansion. Though the author actually doubts that the winds of Chinese revanchism are going to blow west; the Sino-Russian relationship is just different from Beijing's adversarial history with the Pacific powers. ( )