Roanoke: Solving the Mystery of England's Lost Colony

Author: Lee Miller

Rating: 1 Star

Review:

This is a subject I've been interested in for such a long time but this book is so poorly written, I am sad to say I can't even bring myself to finish reading it. This has never happened in my entire life; I've never met a book I couldn't muddle through, but this one has bested me. The author's interspersing of source material in italics in the middle of a sentence was so frustrating, not to mention the fact that the author's own interpretation of said material is sometimes confusing as to how the conclusion was even reached in the first place. I don't know how this book made it past an editor. While the subject itself is interesting and the author seems to have done the research, it's so difficult to get past sentence fragment upon sentence fragment. Too bad really, I was looking forward to this one.

Additionally:

Since abandoning this abysmal book, I have found myself a little more at ease with doing so. As my to read list has increased exponentially, I am coming to accept the fact that there are too many books and too little time. I simply can not be bogged down by books that are truly terrible, as this one was. This book is badly in need of a good editor, and a writer who understand the difference between history and historical fiction.