by Vladimir Shirogorov.
Hardback (6.5×9.5 inches). 406 pages. 2025.
Subtitle: Russia, Poland and the Ottomans, Conflict Over Hegemony 1500-1800
I got to page 34 and stopped reading at the following paragraph:
“Nothing existed in that realm before the establishment of the Moscovite Ukraine’s fortress towns. Nobody survived there as it was a sterile space vacuum-cleaned by the nomadic bloodsucking of population. The Wild Field strategy laid it out to the Muscovite Ukraine as a tabula rosa, a barren terrain where the new social structures, administrative regimes and military order might have been introduced, implemented or rejected without any restriction. It was an experiment in its purest form to implant military-social structures. The tabula rosa social principle of the Wild Field strategy turned the Muscovite Ukraine into a dynamic society of ongoing experimentation characterized by the novel military-social structures which were generated onsite, invented by Muscovite rules or imported and implanted.” (p34)
The entire prose is exactly the same mish-mosh of either: a horrible translation program, a horrible AI, or a horrible AI translation program.
The only hint that some human hand touched this is a possible typo: “desk-to-shore fire by the ships” (p28), which is likely “deck” not desk.
Whatever it was, Pen & Sword editors never read word one of the text — and that is a disturbing thought. What would be a horrible disturbing thought is that Pen & Sword editors actually read the text and OK’d it.
Horrible.
— Reviewed by Russ Lockwood
