Marco Polo (1) (1254–1324)

I guess the biggest surprise of this book is that it's not really a narrative. It's more a description of the world as seen by Marco Polo. This makes it dull in places, and I almost feel I can repeat verbatim the opening to many chapters. "The people here are idolaters. They are subject to the Grand Khan, whose paper money is current between them."

Marco rarely gets into his personal experiences. He doesn't talk about his feelings on seeing these fantastic places, or his difficulties, or even really of the people he meets. Sometimes he gets into some interesting cultural observations, mostly to do with marriage or sexual habits, but otherwise it's pretty dry.

Apparently he was charged with escorting a Mongol princess for part of his journey, and at one point he lost his fortune! At another he governed a town. But he mentions nothing of the first two points and only briefly references the third. I want to hear about the princess! Not 8 different cities, all populated by idolators who use paper money. Of course, if you were a medieval traveller, this information would be much more useful than any story about a princess, and I think therein lies the problem of this book for modern audiences. It's not written for us. It's not written for curiosity or entertainment or historic value, it's a description of the world as it was at the time, written for a medieval audience.… (more)

Have attempted to listen to this audio (downloaded from audible.co.uk) several but so far have had difficulty getting very far into it.[return][return]The narrator is distant and badly recorded - it sounds like he's recorded it down a phone line. The most animation in his voice comes when he stumbles over words he seems not to know but should have practised before recording. Italian in particular seems to be his sticking point - definately an issue when recording a narration of an Italian travelling to the far east! Otherwise his voice is flat and uninteresting - there is narely a breath or change in tone when announcing the chapter changes that happen on a regular basis and that could, nay should, be pulling the listener back to the recording. Instead, it becomes a background noise that is easily tuned out, and therefore missing the possibly fantastical story… (more)