‘What was Andean Christianity like’? This question cited by Alexander Bailey best describes the key point of enquiry of his book. It is the culmination of a remarkable project that systematically documents a particular style of construction and ornamentation of the mid to late seventeenth- and early eighteenth-century churches of the southern Peruvian and northern Bolivian Andean highlands. Bailey's scholarship allows the reader to see clearly how important it is, as he says, to ‘stop polarising Euro-Christian and Andean cultural contributions’ and that Andean Christianity was not simply ‘a matter of extreme polarisation between victimisation and resistance’ (pp. 8–9). Instead, the study more than demonstrates the vibrancy of Andean Christian culture, in contrast to the work of earlier scholars which (with some more recent exceptions) has tended to insist that this particular religious style was either the result of indigenous resistance to European colonial impositions or mere imitation of the earlier European artistic and architectural trend known as Mannerism. The wealth of evidence gathered together by Bailey convincingly puts to rest these earlier oversimplifications. The book begins conventionally, with a theoretical and historiographical essay that contextualises the study that follows. It then embarks on a masterpiece of scholarship divided into three parts. The first part is a systematic church-by-church and region-by-region study of the Andean hybrid baroque style that begins in its ‘crucible’, Arequipa, and follows its influence into what is now Bolivia. Each church section is methodically divided into a description of the architecture and decoration and a brief factual history of the building, providing key dates and naming key personnel. This first part is completed by a chapter that attempts to interpret the allusive meanings of the decorative sculptures on the church façades and interiors. The second part of the book is a generous collection of high-quality colour prints – useful visual demonstrations of what is being described in part i. The third and final part is a painstakingly-compiled selection of transcriptions of relevant documents referring to the construction and decoration of these churches. If Andean hybrid baroque could be said to have a weakness, it is perhaps that from what is said in the introduction, a reader might expect a work that engages a little more with the interpretative meanings of the symbols incorporated within the designs. Bailey does this in chapter x but does not move much further forward than the pioneering work already done by the art historian Teresa Gisbert. That said, it quickly becomes clear that this is not Bailey's primary purpose; rather, the book's highly systematic and methodical approach, and the wealth of information that is contained within it, so painstakingly researched and brought together, enables the book to do exactly what he says it will do and solidly fill the gaps that have hitherto been left in scholarship on the theme. In construction terms, this work is an impressive and necessary keystone for any future scholar of religious architecture in the colonial Andes.