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nightsista's review
3.5
Decently interesting book; though my main complaint is the audiobook narrator. Never have I though the narrator was so out of place. This woman should be reading a contemporary fiction with an unlikable narrator. Yellowface for example. It just took me out of the book. It read like it was a fiction story, not a nonfiction book about archeology. Really weird. Never encountered this before.
wandering_not_lost's review against another edition
informative
medium-paced
4.0
I am always interested in how different cultures do things, so a book about ancient cities is up my alley. The stories suffer a bit from being so ancient history that there's a lot of unknowns about the people who lived in those cities, but it was informative and didn't overstay it's welcome or get too dry.
sarahbook's review against another edition
adventurous
informative
3.0
I am still a bit unsure how to rank nonfiction books, so my 3/5 may need adjusting at some point down the road. There were a lot of really interesting pieces of information in these chapters and I laughed out loud more than once! That is wild! I did not expect to laugh from a book about ancient cities. My only gripe is that the book ended on a pretty dour note that looked at the future. The author certainly tried to make it better with “the human spirit will live on!” But it’s hard to do when the central thesis is about how climate crises and poor governance can cripple a city. I should have known better before reading that last conclusion chapter!
lkeyte's review
It just wasn’t what I was in the mood for. It did seem interesting though and I may very well go back to it at some point.