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peripetia's review
3.0
This is an example of one of those great accomplishments that few writers achieve: making a fascinating topic excruciatingly boring.
The subject was really interesting, but the book was poorly structured. Sometimes I didn't understand what he was even saying, possibly because English is not my first language, or because I didn't get the references, or because it was just hard to follow sometimes. The conclusions drawn from the incomplete sources were sometimes pure conjecture, which is fair from an expert, but still kind of annoyed me.
Despite it all this, the book was interesting, just a struggle to get through.
The subject was really interesting, but the book was poorly structured. Sometimes I didn't understand what he was even saying, possibly because English is not my first language, or because I didn't get the references, or because it was just hard to follow sometimes. The conclusions drawn from the incomplete sources were sometimes pure conjecture, which is fair from an expert, but still kind of annoyed me.
Despite it all this, the book was interesting, just a struggle to get through.
sofer_mahir's review
4.0
A really fascinating deep dive into Mesopotamian beliefs about ghosts and the afterlife. Not overly technical, though perhaps there were places where the amount of information was excessive. (Especially chapter 10 part 2, which was almost entirely a tangent.) There's an excellent chapter on ghosts in the OT, as well. Finkel's writing is engaging and expressive -- never boring. I also greatly appreciated his afterword, where he argues that absolute methodological naturalism in connection with certain historical phenomena, like ghost sightings, is both illogical and uncharitable. Definitely recommend for anybody interested in ancient history.
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