Although it's full of educational historic detail, Trespassers reads like an adventure novel because of Hopkirk's clearly evident passion for his subject and his anecdotal presentation. Hopkirk's fascinating stories about individual adventurers and their techniques gives us a feel not just for what happened during the time and place that is his subject, but also what it felt like. We get not just fact but flavor.
Hopkirk's enthusiastic writing style is only matched by the depth of his knowledge. One cannot help becoming as fascinated by the Western exploration of Tibet as Hopkirk himself is. This is the best of Hopkirk's impressive body of work on the history of the high Central Asian lands, but all of them are worth reading and educate the reader about what is, in the United States, an obscure area of the world. And they're all so fun to read it didn't even feel like they were good for me!