The Other Zions got an excellent review (along with Kevin Brook's Jews of Khazaria) in OUTLOOK: Canada's Progressive Jewish Magazine:
http://www.vcn.bc.ca/outlook/current_issue/Outlook%20website%2010/Sep-Oct%2010/Jews.pdf
Here is a particularly flattering passage:
"Maroney is in fact not an academic historian at all, but an old-fashioned man of letters, the holder of an MA in Philosophy and the author of a book on religious syncretism as well as one of fiction. Nevertheless (or “therefore”) he writes well, lays out evidence and arguments clearly, and appears to be a reliable guide through the thicket of anecdote, rumour and legend which enshrouds the history of many of these far-off times and places."
OUTLOOK has an interesting mandate; they are a magazine well worth reading:
"Outlook Magazine is an independent, secular Jewish publication with a socialist-humanist perspective. Outlook was founded in 1962. It is published six times per year. The magazine has collectives in Montreal, Toronto, Winnipeg, and Vancouver."
The Zionist movement viewed the establishment of a Jewish state as a remedy for Jewish “powerlessness.” In the late nineteenth century, Jews seemed condemned to exist as a despised minority within Christian or Islamic cultures. This well-done and revealing study shows that, even after the final, futile revolt against Roman rule in Judea in the first century, A.D., Jews exercised sovereignty in several regions outside the traditional Jewish homeland. Some of these Jewish states have already been well documented by primary sources; others are shrouded in legend, but their existence is credible. Maroney acknowledges the difficulty in separating fact from fiction and avoids unwarranted speculation. The Khazars, a Turkic people, established a state in the Caspian region and made Judaism their state religion in the ninth century. They may even have attempted missionary work in the emerging Russian state. In the Arabian peninsula, Jewish tribes controlled strips of territory but were overwhelmed by the Islamic tide in the seventh century. This is an informative and surprising examination of some obscure aspects of Jewish history.
— Jay Freeman
