Took me forever to get through this, which in itself isn't a bad thing; while Davies can certainly write, much of this is so dense that every single page sends me on a couple of wiki walks. The topic is so endlessly fascinating that there seems to be endless possible chapters to this.

I can't help but feel, though, that it's slightly inconsistent, both in terms of chapter length (the Byzantines get maybe a tenth of the Burgundians) and in terms of the detail we're given about each place. Sometimes Davies gets caught up in rather shameless nostalgia about a place, sometimes he just rambles on about succession crises.