Not one of the most visited areas in Scotland but the Shetlands are one of the most beautiful by all measurements. This magnificent book brings the glory of the Shetlands right to your chair. The pictures by Colin Baxter, one of Scotland's best know photographers will take your breath away. The real plus of this book is the incredible prose of Jim Crumley. He would bring Shetland alive even if Colin Baxter's pictures were not there. The following is an example of the text

Better still what will you make of The Drongs? Who or what were or was (or God forbid, still are!) The Drongs, and what dire moment in Shetland history caused a monument to be struck to mark their passing? The mind's eye roves around the idea of an Iron Age tribe, perhaps a Pictish sect? On second thoughts, the name carries overtones of unpleasantness, like a bovine disorder. ('We had to put down a whole herd - it was the drongs. Nothing else to be done') Or a species of sea monster like a selkie with dragon's breath? The reality, like so much of Shetland's captivating nomenclature, is less bizarre. It is not that The Drongs do not have powers to captivate, it is just that they are rocks, and their name for all it over tones and undertones, means,well....rocks.

Ah but what rocks! They are the climactic exclamation mark to a ragged ellipsis of lesser rocks and stacks which strut out from the Ness of Hillswick into St. Magnus Bay, standing stones of the ocean, or a red grantie Canute wading waist deep and still urging the tide into retreat. From every angle and in every light, The Drongs effect their own cosmetics subtly made up in red or gold or gray or black; reconstituting themselves from this airt or that - a Marie Celeste reincarnation, a lofty cloaked brotherhood in secretive whispered committe (and chaired, I fancy by the Head Drong), an uncanny Viking helmet from the bay's north shore (where the coast pronounces it own tangy vocabulary... The Runk, Stoura Pund, Heads of Grocken, Harry's Pund, Gray Face...)