This is a pictorial guide to the Seychelles, a large group of granitic and coral islands in the tropical Indian Ocean consisting of about 115 islands – the actual number is disputed. This lichen guide is based on a 14 day field trip to three of the largest islands, Mahé, La Digue and Praslin supplemented by previous records, but no details are provided. The authors present the book with genera in alphabetical order, accompanied by brief descriptions of the Seychelles species and generally good close-up colour photographs. The photographs provide a valuable collection of images, frequently including stained thin sections of the thalli and apothecia, although a few are out of focus. Unfortunately the quality of the text falls short of the better images. While the generic characters are given in reasonable detail, with brief notes on similar genera, the species descriptions are mostly inadequate. For example in the genus Caloplaca, it would not be possible to identify any of the taxa with certainty based upon the descriptions provided. While the images are of assistance, the variability of individual species within this and other genera is ignored. The authors state in the introduction that keys were not included since they rarely lead to successful identifications. This needs qualification. Good keys will usually lead to success and it is a lack of quality in a key that leads to failure. Keys should be built upon a logical sequence of the taxonomic characters. If the characters prove to be unreliable, then the taxonomy and not the keys is the problem.

The text is also pockmarked with irksome errors or ambiguities. For example on page 65 Caloplaca is ‘with or usually without algae’ and on page 92, Coenogonium magdalene is ‘so far only known from Costa Rica. In the Seychelles, found on rock’. With the added typographic/spelling errors, the text does not make for easy reading. At the end of the book collection details are provided for the illustrated lichens, plus a reference list and an index but there is no glossary.

This guide will prove useful to lichenologists working in the tropical Indo-Africa region but it is not a definitive work. Those botanists unacquainted with lichenological terms would find it difficult to use. Some historical background to collecting in the Seychelles, the geography of the region and a more critical appraisal of the flora would have made this a much more useful study.