If you want to see the sometimes brutal collision of ancient empires and unregulated, ham-fisted capitalism, then Central Asia is the place. The many anti-destinations explored by Toronto author Larry Frolick in Grand Centaur Station – Ukraine, Moscow, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Western China, Mongolia and Siberia, among others – are rarely covered in glossy travel guides. The book is a picaresque romp from near-misses with black-Mercedes-driving thugs in Kiev to sipping fermented horse milk in Ulan Bator, hard by the jagged edge of the Gobi Desert.

Frolick, author of 2002’s Ten Thousand Scorpions: The Search for the Queen of Sheba’s Gold, is an accomplished wordsmith with a gift for description. He can be funny, too, but he’s too genuinely thoughtful to induce Bill Bryson-style guffaws.

Among the potholed roads, the bleached landscapes, the grim-faced officialdom, the ostentatious wealth of Russian “bizinessmen,” and the occasional moments of sublime natural – or feminine – beauty, Frolick finds himself knee-deep in a contradiction: That everything is dictated by history and that there is no history, just hordes of people clamouring for smuggled knockoffs of brand-name gym bags or other consumerist flotsam. “Was it Ukraine’s role,” he asks, “to be Europe’s designated Mexico, left in a condition of semi-permanent want as an industrial dumping ground for over-produced lines of cheap cosmetics and a pool of raw labour?”

Central Asian soil, Frolick suggests, is filled to the brim with human blood and bones, rife with lurid stories of merciless conquerors, yet it is a sort of no-place where “the winds blowing over its grassy steppes will keep blowing; the sun will rise over the great plain tomorrow, and the day after that too.” He’s done a lot of reading and a lot of travelling to discover there might not be any there there.

Chances are, most of us will never visit the places Frolick does in Grand Centaur Station. For that reason alone, the book is worth a trip to the local bookstore or library.