– Customer review on 16/10/2011

I love the Genghis series and eagerly looked forward to this newest edition. I was disappointed. It wasn't as riveting as the previous ones. I thought, at first, it was the author but that wasn't it. The characters just weren't as interesting. It makes perfect sense. Children of very successful parents are rarely as interesting. They are not driven by the same forces that shaped their parent, usually poverty and adversity. So it is here. The children did not experience the deprivation that Genghis did. They weren't farmed out to other tribes who hated and tortured them. They had been raised in comfort and respect. They had a different view of the world. Really, the vision was Genghis' and they had different ones. Ogedai followed his own vision and built Karakorum, something that never would have happened under his father's rule. The problem is there is no real explanation of why the city was built, which was troubling to me. Still, Ogedai was influential in other ways. His brother died for him which I found amazing. His demise led to one of the most dynamic changes in world history. Actually, through, no effort of his own, Ogedai impacted history even more that Genghis. He just wasn't as interesting.