BOOK REVIEW: JUNGLE OF STONE BY WILLIAM CARLSEN

I N C L U D E S  A F F I L I A T E  L I N K S

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Title: Jungle of Stone: The Extraordinary Journey of John L. Stephens and Frederick Catherwood, and the Discovery of the Lost Civilization of the Maya
Author: William Carlsen
Published: 2017
Language: English
Pages: 544
Rating: 3/5

Summary:

This is the biography of Stephens and Catherwood who went into the unmapped jungle of Central America in 1839 and discovered ruins belonging to the lost civilization of the Maya. 

Review:

I love books like these; stories of adventure and exploration, of history and ancient cultures and the parts of this book that are about that, I adored. However, there is a lot else in this book as well that I maybe didn't find as interesting.

The story of these two men is fascinating and I really enjoyed getting to know them. I loved following their journey and the story of when they discovered these incredible ruins is magnificent. Catherwood was an illustrator and his remarkable illustrations are scattered throughout the book, and the precision in which they were done is incredibly impressive. I really felt the magic of having trekked into a brutal jungle to find this magic, lost place in there.

If the book had focused only on this part of the story, I would've given this book five stars. I think the writing style is really good and I like the tone of the book. My main issue with this was how much other stuff was included in this though; I was mainly interested in the Mayans, their history, the ruins, the mens discovery and what it meant, and so when the book goes into great detail about what feels like every single other thing we come across in this timeline, I felt myself growing a bit bored and impatient to get back to what I was most interested in.

Because of that, it took me a while to read this book and the reading experience ended up being a little jagged as I felt like kept getting stuck in less interesting parts. It made the book feel longer than necessary and lessened my enjoyment a bit. I think the good parts in here are fantastic, but everything in between much less so. 

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