Picture, if you will, a young German soldier stationed on the Russian front in April of 1942. The thawing ground and spring rains have conspired to turn the roads and the entire countryside into a lugubrious quagmire. Any progress requires Herculean effort to drag oneself forward thru this practically impassable morass. This will give you a fairly good idea of what it is like to read this book.
If you don't already know that Martin West was an Oxford scholar of utmost erudition, you will learn in the first couple of pages. The text is liberally sprinkled with passages in Sanskrit, Latin, Greek and Lithuanian. Added to this is the most cumbersome and distracting system of inline attributions that one is ever likely to run across. Each page is generously provided with footnotes, which remarkably manage to be more obscure than the text. To be fair, West does provide some very good information. But these seem almost to be asides, and are rare nuggets to pick from the encrusting matrix.
But the worst part is that the book actually tells us very little about Indo-Europeans, their poetry, or their myth. West seems fixated on the words, but not the words as living concepts in people's minds. His focus is the form of the word, in spelling and sound. It's like he was trying to beat the 19th century philologists at their own game, but the 19th century philologists were much better players.
Speaking of which, instead of this book, get Outlines of Primitive Belief Among the Indo-European Races by Charles Keary. Not only is Keary more insightful and profound, he is a very good writer. The book may be from 1882, and it certainly has its errors and there was much not yet known, but you will learn far more about Indo-European beliefs and mythology than you will from West. The book is available as a print on demand and is much less expensive.
Which brings me to the last objection. This book is grossly overpriced. There is a wealth of archaeological and cultural material, maps, etc. that help bring the Indo-European world alive. For this price you would expect a glossy, top quality volume filled with beautifully printed, full color plates. Sadly, no. There is not a single illustration, not even a line drawing.
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