Ugh!
Just Ugh.

As interesting as it is to learn about history, this book just couldn’t cut the mustard. It was agonizing to wade through the over-comma usage and goofy sentences. I made it to the halfway point in the book in four weeks! Yikes. I’m not usually a slow reader, but I was down to only reading this book when I was commuting and had nothing else to do.
The gimmick of having the story read as Justinian’s aoutobiography was fine, but the interjection of his servant talking to the priest who is reading the autobiography was annoying and redundant. We never hear what the priest is saying so we got things like: “Eh? What’s that brother? You want to know why I told Justinian to kick a puppy? Oh, now you’re coughing.”
Obviously not ex-actly that sentence, but you can imagine how annoying that dynamic got when it interrupted the story every three or four pages. Who would talk like that? Who would just repeat every single sentence that was just spoken to them before replying?

This book was a pain in the ass to read. I’m no masochist, I couldn’t finish it no matter how much I love history. It would’ve been faster to just Wiki Justinian II and learn about the guy online.