Tag Archives: Historical – General

River God

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews River God [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Wilbur Smith, book 1 of the Egyptian series.

Smith Wilbur

The conceit of this massive novel is that it is an elaborated translation of the chronicle of the Queen Regent Lostris of Egypt (ca. 1800 BCE) as narrated by her slave Taita. The latter is really the focus of the tale, as he is responsible for a multitude of stratagems and accomplishments of statecraft, warfare, and technology. Over the course of the book he invents indoor plumbing, Egyptian floral motifs, the spoked wheel, and bio-warfare, among other exhibitions of cleverness. If your credulity can bear up under that, the story is a sweeping epic with fairly vivid characters. 

Ultimately, though, the impression delivered to the reader is that the Egyptians of four millenia gone were not so different from “us,” and Smith makes this moral explicit in his epilogue. In this respect, I find the book diametrically opposed to the volume to which I am most tempted to compare it, Norman Mailer’s Egyptian saga Ancient Evenings. Mailer impressed me with his ability to insinuate the reader’s understanding into a culture profoundly alien to modern “scientific” materialism. Smith seems to have done the reverse: keeping the events of remote antiquity within a moral and cultural compass that is already conveniently accessible to the modern reader.

Smith River God New

The Ape Who Guards the Balance

Hermetic Library Fellow T Polyphilus reviews The Ape Who Guards the Balance [Amazon, Bookshop, Publisher, Local Library] by Elizabeth Peters, book 10 of the Amelia Peabody series.

Peters The Ape Who Guards the Balance

In this volume of the fearsomely-long Amelia Peabody series, the second-generation Peabody-Emersons are no longer children. They are even given their own voices as narrators in the interspersed documents designated “Manuscript H” (Ramses, evidently, though he writes of himself in the third person), and “Letter Collection B” (Nefret). The majority of the text remains Amelia’s journal, although given the growing centrality of the younger characters, she is increasingly “Aunt Amelia.” More than many of the other books in the series, this one is anchored in previously-developed characters and plot strands. I don’t know if I have much confidence that it would read well as a stand-alone novel. 

After a fairly lively start involving a theft in England and the attempted abduction of Amelia herself, the bulk of the book takes place in Egypt. The archaeological focus is in the Valley of the Kings, with the Emersons somewhat sidelined by the antiquities establishment. There are kidnappings and murders, and the perpetrators and motives remain obscure for much of the book, with some perplexity resulting from the numerous past villains at loose ends in the Emersons’ world.

There’s a little more action and violence here than the average Peabody book, and plenty of humor — also, some heartache and sorrow. It’s definitely worth the read for someone who has enjoyed earlier volumes in the series.