Boundless Unenthusiasm

I mentioned The Boundless Sea on this blog back in 2021 – and wasn't too complimentary about it, since I felt it didn't quite live up to the over-the-top plaudits published on its cover.

At that point I was only 200 pages in... but now I've finished the other 700...

It was a close run thing, since David Abulafia's water-based great tale is distinctly, er, dry.

It's a remarkable – if ultimately rather dull – book. But it does do a good job of chronicling humanity's greed, violence and selfishness – all, sadly, the drivers of so much of the nautical exploration and adventures catalogued here.

Abulafia often speeds through complex and momentous events, but for some reason he always finds a little time to rubbish Thor Heyerdahl. He discounts the Norwegian adventurer's theories about westward migration across the Pacific from the Americas – and then dismisses him as a "self-publicist".

I know only a few things about Heyerdahl. But they include the fact that he put his life on the line more than once to test his theories... and he was a bloody good writer...

And Heyerdahl's books have all the passion that The Boundless Sea lacks.