This is a useful and wide-ranging collection of papers, originally the subject of a panel entitled ‘Monastic mountains and deserts’ at the 21st International Congress of Byzantine Studies held in London in August 2006. Holy mountains and deserts were not uncommon phenomena in the Byzantine world. They were not necessarily particularly high or particularly arid, but they were isolated from the everyday world and offered opportunity for ascetic practices. A few survive to this day, notably Sinai, Athos, Meteora, Mar Saba and the Coptic monasteries of the Egyptian deserts. This book is devoted to a selection of those that do not. It comprises seven papers. James Goehring (‘Constructing and enforcing orthodoxy: evidence from the Coptic panegyrics on Abraham of Farshut’) examines three texts that concern Abraham of Farshut, the last Coptic abbot of the Pachomian monastic federation, which was dissolved in the sixth century in the wake of the Council of Chalcedon. Klaus Belke (‘Heilige Berge Bithyniens’) focuses on the monastic mountains of Auxentios, Olympos and Kyminas in Bithynia. These mountains did not form a unit; and the differences between them, in terms of density of population, type of monasticism practised and durability of the foundation, can be attributed, at least in part, to geographical factors. Richard Greenfield (‘Shaky foundations: opposition, conflict and subterfuge in the creation of the holy mountain of Galesion’) examines three strands in the narrative of this mountain's early years: the opposition to its creation from the local ‘orthodox’ ecclesiastical authorities, the development of conflicting factions within the community itself, and the defensive strategies employed by its founder in the face of hostility. Andreas Külzer (‘Das Ganos-Gebirge in Ostthrakien’) provides an overview of the many churches, monasteries and holy sites in the Ganos mountain range, supported by an interesting selection of photographs illustrating the landscape and the fragmentary architectural remains. Danica Popovic (‘The deserts and holy mountains of medieval Serbia’) tackles a neglected topic for which the sources are few and the monuments largely devastated. The idea of the holy mountain came to Serbia from Athos, and from Hilandar in particular, but the many illustrations (of variable quality) that accompany the paper show the scale and spectacular settings of some of Serbia's own monastic deserts and mountains. Angeliki Delikari (‘Ein Beitrag zu historisch-geographischen Fragen auf dem Balkan: “Paroria”’) offers a useful contribution to the long-running debate on the location of Paroria, the monastic area on the borders of Byzantium and Bulgaria to which St Gregory of Sinai resorted on leaving Athos. David Khoshtaria (‘Past and present of the Georgian Sinai’) also undertakes a little-known topic in his survey of the neglected monuments of Klarjeti. He too has a rich field to explore but his piece is frankly a disappointment. He does not trouble to explain the term ‘Georgian Sinai’, he fails to make the connection between Klarjeti and Athos and his text would have benefitted from the attentions of a good copy-editor.