This book came recommended by Seb Falk in the bibliography of The Light Ages, and it's also on the reading list of /r/askHistorians, which I trust a lot. I found this book harder to like – who writes sentences like “when the barbarian tribes took over or destroyed the Roman infrastructure” in this century? It was long-winded and seemed to alternate between being jovial and trying for jokes, and going for a more professorial style. Not only the style was uneven: I also felt like the assumed prior knowledge fluctuated a lot, and was sometimes left out entirely, and then filled in with excrutiating care at other times.