I recently received a copy of this book and the translated text from the author. In brief, I find it excellent and recommend to all interested in Afghan and Indo-Persian arms in general.. The chapters on regulation Afghan army weapons, shashkas, and dating Afghan weapons are particularly interesting. They contained information I had not yet come across.

There are many photographs and illustrations, almost all with great clarity and detail.

My one minor suggestion for improvement would be to provide some more data for the examples pictured: mass and distal taper would be interesting and help understand the geometry of the blades.

Thank you very much for your review of my book.

I have been meaning to say for some time that I find this book to be a valuable reference. My review has been delayed to some degree by the fact that the book does contain a lot of information and when cross referenced with the source material is a bit of an undertaking to fully appreciate. I find this to be a positive factor in a book such as this one. I have enjoyed the book's arguments using linguistics to pinpoint origin of blade type and the logic behind the scarcity of brass as a tool to help establish age. Whether further scholarship validate and reinforce his ideas only time will tell, but I personally appreciate Dmitry's efforts researching this underappreciated subject and hope he continues his studies. I look forward to your next writings.

As ihutch1 said above, I would love more information about the examples shown.

Sincerely,
IP

Thank you very much for your opinion. It's very nice to hear it.
If I manage to publish an English version of my book, I will be sure to include the weight of most of the items (since most of the items published in the book are from my collection and that of my friends). I will also mention the cross section of the blades.