This is an eye opener, a collection of linked short stories about tribal life in the debated lands between Afghanistan and Pakistan, which is a world that I imagine very few people reading this will ever experience. The common ground in each story is Tor Baz (the Black Falcon), but he is often a minor or background character in a snapshot of an aspect of tribal life. The writing is simple and clear, giving it an almost fairy tale air, but but there is no flinching from gritty reality in the content. At the beginning I was thinking it was intended as an elegy for a way of life that was dying. By the time I finished, I’d decided it was probably a good thing said way of life was on the way out.