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A review by writerbeverly
Daughter of the God-King by Anne Cleeland
3.0
I almost hesitate to write a review, because I am NOT the audience for this book. While I loved Nancy Drew as a child, I have never liked mysteries as an adult, but I keep trying them, as if THIS time I'm going to find the key as to why others enjoy them so.
Set in the time after Napoleon almost conquered the world and was exiled to Elba, this books is well-plotted; there are lots of twists and turns and surprises I did not see coming. Hattie, aka Hathor, the English daughter of two missing archaeologists, journeys to Paris, then Egypt, in search of them, or at least, answers as to what became of them.
I never really cared about Hattie, from whose POV the story is told, and her studied disinterest in Eqyptology did not make me like her any better. The "poor, ignorant natives" thread ran through the scenes in which native Egyptians appeared, which might've been the true attitude of the English and French colonialists at the time, but I would have liked some greater depth/understanding shown by at least one of the main characters. Hattie's love interest kept telling her he couldn't tell her anything, except "trust me," which made me grit my teeth and want to smack him. And until the very end, though we kept HEARING of this person or that being killed, the murders/fights were rarely shown "on screen."
And yet, I did keep reading, because I wanted to find out how it all tied together at the end - and it did. The Regency language and sentence structure, while it made for somewhat stilted reading, was also much more accurate than other Regency novels I've read, which feel like contemporary romance dressed up to play tea party. I think if you're a mystery and/or Regency fan, you'll probably like this very much. If your tastes are like mine, not so much.
Set in the time after Napoleon almost conquered the world and was exiled to Elba, this books is well-plotted; there are lots of twists and turns and surprises I did not see coming. Hattie, aka Hathor, the English daughter of two missing archaeologists, journeys to Paris, then Egypt, in search of them, or at least, answers as to what became of them.
I never really cared about Hattie, from whose POV the story is told, and her studied disinterest in Eqyptology did not make me like her any better. The "poor, ignorant natives" thread ran through the scenes in which native Egyptians appeared, which might've been the true attitude of the English and French colonialists at the time, but I would have liked some greater depth/understanding shown by at least one of the main characters. Hattie's love interest kept telling her he couldn't tell her anything, except "trust me," which made me grit my teeth and want to smack him. And until the very end, though we kept HEARING of this person or that being killed, the murders/fights were rarely shown "on screen."
And yet, I did keep reading, because I wanted to find out how it all tied together at the end - and it did. The Regency language and sentence structure, while it made for somewhat stilted reading, was also much more accurate than other Regency novels I've read, which feel like contemporary romance dressed up to play tea party. I think if you're a mystery and/or Regency fan, you'll probably like this very much. If your tastes are like mine, not so much.