Writer-photographer team Ian Gill and David Nunuk have paired up for a second book about Canada’s West Coast, Haida Gwaii. Though the colour photographs that document their three journeys hiking, sailing, and kayaking through the Queen Charlotte Islands are breathtaking, writer Ian Gill is unable to do what he and others so admire in the Haida storytellers: he fails to build a coherent story out of the “inchoate shambles” of this natural setting. Instead, Gill opts for an anecdotal approach, unable to commit himself to a single story line. Part adventurer, part historian, part environmentalist, and part would-be poet, he skims the surface of Haida culture and the Haida homeland and fails to do justice to these incredible islands, leaving the reader with the distinct impression that a picture is worth much more than a thousand words.