This book is clearly way too short to do justice to any of the Empires covered in it, given each one deserves and most certainly has books significantly longer than this written about them, but as an overview of each it's quite a pleasant read.

The section on the Mongol empire was my personal favourite as it focused more on explaining the nature of the empire and how it worked rather than being heavy on names and dates as some of the other entries were.

It leads me to want to read more about these empires which I imagine was the aim so for that achievement a solid 3.5 rating is fair to me.