The Apocalypse of the Theotokos and the Apocalypse of Anastasia have been crying out for proper study since 1981, when the late Evelyne Patlagean identified these apocryphal ‘tours of hell’ as important documents for the middle Byzantine religious mentality, thoroughly undeserving of the neglect into which they had been dismissed, as derivative dross, by scholars panning for nuggets of historical information. Jane Baun has risen to the challenge with great skill and imagination in this deep and wide-ranging search for a context in which to read the message of such colourful but anonymous texts, whose only firm dating criterion is the allusion, in Anastasia, to the punishment suffered by the emperor John i Tzimiskes for the murder of his predecessor Nikephoros ii (969). The book, which grew out of the author's Princeton PhD thesis, takes us meticulously through the fluid manuscript tradition, the generic antecedents, related contemporary writings, the topographical and theological imaginaire, and the moral envrironment of the apocrypha and their urgent concern with intercession. The learned but engaging discussion abounds in original insights to which even a much fuller review could hardly do justice. One is particularly struck by the contrast that emerges between these and earlier visions of the afterlife, notably the late antique Apocalypse of Paul. The successive tableaux of heavenly bliss or, much more frequently, infernal torment, lack logical spatial organisation, and their presentation is perceptively compared with the viewing of a middle Byzantine fresco or mosaic cycle. This is just one of the ways in which the peculiarities of the texts are related to tenth-century Byzantine realities. Though insistent on Orthodoxy of belief, the texts effectively elide God the Father and Son, and present this undifferentiated divinity as a remote, unremitting despot, reminiscent of Byzantine imperial authority at its most autocratic and bureaucratic; it takes some amazingly bold initiatives on the part of the Virgin Mary to win some respite for Creation and some temporary relief for the tormented sinners, whose punishment Baun not implausibly identifies as a sort of proto-purgatory. Through careful analysis of what is included, emphasised or left out, she concludes that the works express the concern for salvation in a predominantly lay and provincial environment. She makes the interesting and fruitful suggestion that they emanated not from the usual social mileux of written production – the court, the clergy and the monasteries – but from the world of the pious confraternities that have left so little trace in the sources, yet may well explain elusive texts, like apocalypses, which do not obviously fit elsewhere. This is cultural history and textual analysis at their best. It is a pity that all the Greek quotations are rendered in an unnecessary (these days) transliteration that grates on readers who know the language and is surely no help to those who do not.