Very good book. Loved the characters and world building! There were a few moments where I found the story to be moving a long a little slow, but they definitely didn't last very long. Definitely a to-buy!

I picked this book up knowing very little about the history of France, let alone of the Lauragais region. I found a few interesting tidbits here, like the history of the pastel-dying industry, but on the whole, I found the book too rambling to be useful as a history book. It's very over-written, with the author attempting a kind of humorous travelogue alongside the historical information. The writing style is too dramatic and overblown for the subject matter - I was put off when encountering a paragraph-long description of him eating a sandwich including details about how he moved his tongue. Bill Bryson this isn't.

I think there is a lot of interesting history in the region, but I couldn't connect at all to the way that the book was written, and I ended up not taking a lot of it in because I was bored of skimming the overdone prose. Others may get on better if they enjoy the writing style.

I received a copy of this book from NetGalley in exchange for a review.

The subject was very interesting. This book tells the story of a region of France whose history is really the history of Europe. The author, whose work was new to me, writes in an extremely engaging way. I really enjoyed this and was very glad I took a chance on it. Highly recommend to history readers or anyone interested in Europe.