Cryptic

There are many ancient manuscripts whose authors used codes and ciphers to disguise the contents of their work and this book explores nine of these European texts.

I had great expectations of this book, anticipating an exploration of codes and ciphers over the ages. And I suppose this is sort of what I was given, although the emphasis was very much on the whys and wherefores, rather than on the codes themselves. Extensive research was obviously undertaken to write the book and I appreciated the work that had gone into it.

However, unfortunately I was disappointed in the end result. All of the manuscripts under discussion were very old and, when the author was known, the chapter dedicated to that manuscript was basically a biography of the author, followed by a history of the manuscript and its whereabouts throughout its history. Speculations were made about the reasons for the encoding, which included secret societies hiding their discoveries from the uninitiated, alchemists and medics adding mystery to their work to encourage investors and curry favour with the royal courts as well as bare-faced hoaxes. On the whole, the delivery was dull, often tedious and it read more like an academic textbook than a book aimed at a mass market. Ultimately I am afraid that my interests lay more with the codes themselves and I was also expecting some more recent contributions.

Whilst this book is undoubtedly of interest to somebody with a particular fascination with the niche area of ancient encoded manuscripts, I am not sure that I would recommend it to a wider market.