His prolix writing style does begin to grate after a bit. By Volume IV I was thinking at times, "Just say it directly already!" Additionally, everything after Justinian and the restoration is subpar in quality. In my six-volume version, that was about halfway through Volume IV.

When he starts to talk about the Muslim rise and the Mongols, he just starts saying lots of things that aren't technically true, and of course as a lover of Byzantine I think he really did them a disservice.

You might want to note that he goes beyond the fall of Trebizond to talk about inconsequential urban politics in Rome (the city itself) in the Renaissance for a full sixty pages at least. It was tedious in the extreme to read.