I completed 30% of the book and at least 50% of that has to do with sexual exploits...on and on ad nauseam. Sex wasn't just mentioned briefly, but entire chapters of explicit detail. Sigh.....I read 240 pages and I'm done! DNF ( )

En su vejez, Marco Polo fue apodado `Marco Millones`, porque en Venecia todo el mundo creía que la historia de sus viajes era una sarta de innumerables mentiras. A punto de morir un sacerdote le ofreció la última oportunidad para reconocer sus embustes pero, según dicen, Marco Polo contesto: `No he contado ni la mitad de lo que vi y de lo que hice`.
Aquí se narran algunas de sus hazañas y embustes.

I liked it, as I did Aztec and raptor, and enjoyed it, except the totally useless and baseless part about India that was filled with outright lies. I've no idea why he went with the racism against Hindus. Almost everything was a blatant lie. No, there wasn't a race that inhabited India before Hindus that built the temples, it is painfully obvious since the same temples have been continually erected well into present day. It was the Europeans who were dirty and bathed once a month (the aztecs would follow them around with incense sticks to keep the stench at bay) while the Hindus have daily bathing incorporated into their religion. There's also some dialogs by the Hindu king disparaging the Buddha much as the followers of Abrahamic faith disparage each other, even though worshipping a "hindu" god like shiva and also worshipping buddha aren't mutually exclusive and have been done by the multitude, from peasants to royality. There are so many mistakes in that part, especially about the language and words used (using words like dak bungalow in a pre-british, and that too South India), not to mention the fact that the pashto that a girl speaks in the pai mir is actually today's Hindi, what i mean to say is that there's way too many mistakes regarding India and Hindus and their culture in this book. He said that there are light skinned upper caste Hindus who claim superiority owing to their descent from some foreign race, while in reality it's a term of insult when some dalit calls a brahmin a eurasian or something and claims that he himself is the moolnivasi. Also at that period people in cholamandalam were fans of dark skin, used to rub sesame oil on the skin of their infants to darken it, they were not wannabe whites as is shown here. There's way too many mistakes and i don't have either the time or the will to their light upon all of them.

I can't say about the accuracy of other parts since i only know much about Indian history but I'm sorry to say if everything else in the novel is as historically accurate as that part about India, then I sure regret wasting my time reading this fairy tale. ( )

My least favorite of the books of his that I have read. ( )

BUR