I picked up this book knowing very little about the Great Game or its history, but I when I was done reading this book my impressions of the period were a rich tapestry of strange events and stranger people. Reading the history of the Great Game is not unlike reading the history of Cold War espionage, to which this period is a definite precursor. The difference here is that the British and Russian heroes of the narrative are pure Kipling and Conrad; they cross the treacherous wastes in search of adventure, and adventure alone. The Eastern figures, emirs and warlords and petty kings, are cut from the cloth of the most excessive romantic orientalism: they have stately courts and topless minarets in cities paved with marble and their silence is stony and their favour hard-won; they lie and cheat mercilessly and are willing to throw human life away at the slightest of whims or the smallest offence; and, most of all, they are haughty and proud, their pride being often mortally wounded when they can't obtain a personal reply or visit from Queen Victoria herself.

The prose is largely unnoticeable which is as much as anyone could ask for in a narrative history. The characters towards the beginning of the history are without a doubt the richest part of the work if only because their stories belong to the period in the Great Game when Central Asia was still a mystery to Europe. And the fact that the people in the narrative lose their steam is more a reflection of reality than a fault in the book itself. Nevertheless, the end fizzles out.

All in all it's thoroughly worth the time for the larger than life characters who are painted here in exquisite detail and for the anecdotes and small stories which are priceless in their own right.