McKillop sets out her stall well and covers the ground efficiently, but this book is let down by her basic lack of writing ability. The prose is flat and halting, when it needs fluency and bounce to carry the solidly archaeological premise of the book. And it's not just a problem with style: there are a few tangled knots of text which want an editorial machete.

The other letdown from my perspective was the failure - or rather the lack of any attempt - to bring the Mayan civilization to life. But that's not really the intention of this book.

As a survey of Mayan scholarship and the archaeological record this is very good, but I suspect most readers will want something a little different, or a little extra. ( )

Generally good detailed survey of all aspects of preculumbian Maya culture. Some of it is a bit dry, but overall readable. The author writes as a "dirt" archaeologist with experiemce excavating Maya sites in Belize that were more important for econom ics (salt prodiction) than the spectacular temples and palaces. She seems to be fair describing alternatives to her own theories.
Although unlike some "dirt" archaeologists, she is not hostile to the epigraphers who can now read Maya inscriptions, she does not seem to understand the history of the decipherment very well. Her brief account of it is derivative and seems to confuise some points in her sources (which I've read) --at one point she has Thompson thinking the Landa alphabet was "etters "hen he thought it was misunderstood logograms. Later on, she has a more correct version, but it could be better. ( )