Research on Eastern (‘Nestorian’) Christianity in Central Asia and China has in recent years witnessed a renewed interest, involving different fields (Sinology, Turcology, Church history, Syriac and Iranic studies etc). A work focused on China under Mongol rule in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, an important period because of the relative abundance of evidence, elicits much attention. The book is divided into four chapters: i, ‘A brief political history of Inner Asia up to the Mongol conquest’ (pp. 1–16); ii, ‘Christian nations and tribes on the steppe in medieval times’ (pp. 17–49); iii, ‘Traces of East Syrian Christianity in Yuan-China’ (pp. 51–85); iv, ‘East Syrian Christianity in China under the Mongol Empire: a history reconstructed’ (pp. 87–149), plus a bibliography (pp. 151–65) and a brief index (pp. 167–9). Chapters ii–iii (presenting the literary and epigraphic evidence) are followed by an attempt at historical reconstruction (chapter iv, the largest at sixty-three pages), which appears as the most original part of the book. Of particular interest are the sections on Christian Önggüd families (pp. 100–6), and those relating to economic activities (pp. 108–13, 122–3) and to the decline of the Christian presence after the Yuan dynasty (pp. 145–9). The book is recommended for those interested in general information on the subject, but readers should be warned that it is not always reliable. Some proposed interpretations are not sufficiently argued (for example, the link between ‘Elijah’ [sic, for Elias] founder of the Church of Samarkand and ‘Elijah’, a metropolitan of Merv cited in the Syriac Chronica minora, pp. 134–5), if not devoid of all ground (for example, p. 108, the presence of a Christian monastery in Fangshan, where ‘East Syrian tablets with Chinese inscriptions were found’: on the site there are two Chinese stele dating to the Liao and Yuan dynasty, which expressly refer to a Buddhist monastery even though the Yuan stele bears a cross amid its decoration; the only Christian evidence is a short Syriac quotation on a stone block decorated with a cross, now in Nanjing Museum); that ‘the Rabban Sauma mentioned in the History of Yaballaha III came from this monastery’ is pure speculation, easily disproved by the cited History of Mar Yaballaha. A less superficial and more critical reading of the sources and scholarly literature would have helped. Second-hand access to the epigraphic material has produced factual mistakes: for example, the inscription labelled as ‘Tri-lingual (Chinese, Mongolian and Syro-Turikic [sic])’ on p. 77 is bilingual (Turkic in Syriac script and in Uighur script, and Chinese). Mistakes in the Syriac and Latin quotations, and also in English, are numerous. Other shortcomings unfortunately abound (for example, nouns are often spelled differently on the same page [or paragraph], as on p. 135, ‘Liang Xiang’ and ‘Liangxiang’; nn. 511 and 512 simply repeat what is already found in the text, etc.). A careful peer review and less hasty proof-reading could certainly have improved both the scholarly quality of the book and its presentation.