The Sekhmet Bed by L. M. Ironside

The Sekhmet Bed by L. M. Ironside(Cover picture courtesy of L. M. Ironside’s website.)

Is Ahmose’s divine gift a blessing or a curse?

The second daughter of the Pharaoh, Ahmose has always dreamed of a quiet life as a priestess, serving Egypt’s gods, ministering to the people of the Two Lands. But when the Pharaoh dies without an heir, she is given instead as Great Royal Wife to the new king – a soldier of common birth. For Ahmose is god-chosen, gifted with the ability to read dreams, and it is her connection to the gods which ensures the new Pharaoh his right to rule.

Ahmose’s elder sister Mutnofret has been raised to expect the privileged station of Great Royal Wife; her rage at being displaced cannot be soothed. As Ahmose fights the currents of Egypt’s politics and Mutnofret’s vengeful anger, her youth and inexperience carry her beyond her depth and into the realm of sacrilege.

To right her wrongs and save Egypt from the gods’ wrath, Ahmose must face her most visceral fear: bearing an heir. But the gods of Egypt are exacting, and even her sacrifice may not be enough to restore the Two Lands to safety.

The Sekhmet Bed is the first volume of L. M. Ironside’s series The She-King, a family saga of the Thutmosides, one of ancient Egypt’s most fascinating royal families.

The Sekhmet Bed was actually recommended to me by an editor from another publishing house that I consider a friend.  It was free on Amazon for that day so I decided to give it a try, considering that her previous recommendations had worked out very well for me.  Thankfully, this one was no different.

It seems more and more people are writing about Hatshepsut these days (hallelujah!) but I’ve never, ever seen anyone write about her mother, Ahmose.  And you know what?  Ahmose deserves a little recognition too because while she obviously couldn’t match her daughter in some of her achievements she was a strong woman in her own way.  Ironside filled in some gaps in the historical record with her own imaginings but it’s not out of the realm of possibility that things didn’t actually happen in a similar fashion.

Ahmose is just a girl when she’s married off to Thutmose, a common general who is chosen as the next Pharaoh because of the lack of male heirs in the family.  This makes both of their positions extremely precarious and it’s up to Ahmose to smooth things over in the political sphere.  She’s very obviously young and naive when she’s first married but I love how she really comes into her own as she grows older.  Ahmose doesn’t have an easy time of it in life but she reacts realistically to a rather bad situation and eventually finds a little bit of happiness.

I wouldn’t say the plot is fast-paced by most standards, but it was very interesting.  There’s not as much political intrigue as I would have liked but that’s more of a personal preference than anything else.  The religious aspect of the novel was fascinating, though, and I love that Ironside went into such detail about Egyptian religion.  It’s quite strange to the modern reader but she manages to explain such things to the reader in a way that makes it easy to understand for people new to ancient Egyptian history as well as fanatics like myself.

Basically, this is just an awesome self-published novel.  There were barely any errors and none of them were particularly memorable (just some missed quotation marks and such).  Really, this is just a good story with an amazing female lead and great historical accuracy.  Where there are changes, they’re completely justified so I can’t even complain about that.  The Sekhmet Bed is just a great book and I can’t wait to read more of Ironside’s work.

I give this book 5/5 stars.

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Gotta Hate Summer Colds

Ugh, I’ve been sick for about a week at this point, mostly with a sore throat.  (Tonsillitis, again.)  But when I woke up this morning with a mild fever I knew my day was going to be fun. *sarcasm*

Needless to say between snoozing on the couch and getting up to check my temperature and blow my nose I didn’t get much done, work-wise or blog-wise.  That’s why there was no review of The Sekhmet Bed today.  I’m hoping to get both my late review of The Sekhmet Bed and the scheduled The Exiled Queen review up tomorrow, but we’ll see what the day brings.  Either way, I should probably be posting tomorrow.

 

Writing Pitfalls: Pacing

Unlike with some things like dialogue or grammar, pacing in a novel is not that easy to fix.  Every author writes differently (obviously) so of course everyone is going to make different mistakes.  The only tried-and-true method for working out pacing issues is getting a good developmental editor, but I’ve decided to write some tips to help you avoid the most common pitfalls when it comes to pacing.

Pitfall #1: Not enough/too much background information.

One of the problems that I most commonly encounter, particularly in fantasy and science fiction is that the writer is trying so hard to have a fast-paced story that they leave out information that could help the reader actually understand the story.  In fantasy it’s important that you reveal information about your world and the rules therein to your reader or they’re really not going to care what’s happening.  The same goes for science fiction, which also has the added difficulty of explaining science to both newbies to the genre and hardcore fans.

As a writer it’s hard to separate what information you’re imparting to the reader from what information you have up in your head that seems obvious to you, the creator.  One of the best ways to figure out whether you have enough background is to get some beta readers.  If they’re left with more questions than answers by the end of the novel you’ve got some more writing to do.

Conversely, if a reader doesn’t need to learn about every family’s bloodlines, motivations, hair colour, eye colour, etc. then you’ve got some rewriting to do to take out that irrelevant information.  It’s important for the reader to be able to distinguish secondary characters from one another but if you as a writer really need to focus on making your main characters pop out.  This not only helps the reader follow your story but helps with the plot so you don’t get too bogged down in secondary character subplots. Continue reading →

Curses and Smoke by Vicky Alvear Shecter

Curses and Smoke by Vicky Alvear Shecter(Cover picture courtesy of Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours.)

When your world blows apart, what will you hold onto?

TAG is a medical slave, doomed to spend his life healing his master’s injured gladiators. But his warrior’s heart yearns to fight in the gladiator ring himself and earn enough money to win his freedom.

LUCIA is the daughter of Tag’s owner, doomed by her father’s greed to marry a much older Roman man. But she loves studying the natural world around her home in Pompeii, and lately she’s been noticing some odd occurrences in the landscape: small lakes disappearing; a sulfurous smell in the air. . . .

When the two childhood friends reconnect, each with their own longings, they fall passionately in love. But as they plot their escape from the city, a patrician fighter reveals his own plans for them — to Lucia’s father, who imprisons Tag as punishment. Then an earthquake shakes Pompeii, in the first sign of the chaos to come. Will they be able to find each other again before the volcano destroys their whole world?

[Full disclosure: I received a free paperback from the publisher in exchange for an honest review during the book tour.]

One of the things that struck me about Vicky Alvear Shecter’s first book, Cleopatra’s Moon was the historical accuracy.  She is an excellent writer when it comes to putting little historical details into her writing to give it that authentic feel.  In this novel she’s even better because there are detailed descriptions of the medical practices, gladiator training and even the current political climate.  That’s not really something you expect from a book aimed at the younger YA demographic (13 to about 15) so I was quite impressed.

Her characters were good, but I didn’t take a particular shine to either of the leads.  Lucia is quite naive, as would be expected from her upbringing, but she never really gets any better either.  She still doesn’t know when to speak and when to keep her mouth shut, which is pretty frustrating for me.  Still, she’s a well developed character and you really get the feeling that she is the product of her upbringing.  Tag (short for Tages) is far more interesting with his medical knowledge and his desire to become a gladiator to buy his freedom.  That could be because I’m a sucker for the underdog in stories but whatever.  In the end, all of the characters Vicky Alvear Shecter writes about are well-developed and have believable motivations demonstrated through their actions.

The plot was quite well done in terms of pacing.  There’s this slow build-up to the eruption of Mt. Vesuvius and you can see how all of the signs of an eruption were there before from animals acting crazy to wells drying up.  Of course no one knew what was going on at the time so it was quite suspenseful for Lucia to slowly discover all of the signs before reaching her ultimate, terrifying conclusion.  The only thing I didn’t like about the plot was how it ended.  It was a little too melodramatic and the magical curse element seemed to come practically out of nowhere.  Looking back, I really think this book would have been better without the random curse that shows up about halfway into the book.  It just seems random and tries to add to the overall tension but really doesn’t.

In general, I think Curses and Smoke is a pretty good novel.  I don’t think it’s as good as Cleopatra’s Moon but I’d recommend it to young readers 13 to 15.

I give this book 3.5/5 stars.

Amazon     Barnes and Noble     Goodreads

The Week Ahead (#10)

Last week was tough for me in my personal life, what with my boss/mentor/role model passing away from leukemia.  Understandably, my scheduling was a bit messed up but now I’m ready to try to get back to normal and start moving on.

Monday

Curses and Smoke by Vicky Alvear Shecter

  • A review of Curses & Smoke by Vicky Alvear Shecter.  I read Cleopatra’s Moon by the same author nearly a year ago and loved it so when I heard Historical Fiction Virtual Book Tours was doing a tour for her latest book I had to sign up.  We’ll see if it was worth it!

 

 

Tuesday

The latest installment in my writing pitfalls series called Writing Pitfalls: Pacing.  Pacing is often a huge issue when it comes to books and I’d like to offer a little advice to authors who have trouble with it.

Wednesday

The Sekhmet Bed by L. M. Ironside

  • A review of The Sekhmet Bed by L. M. Ironside.  This is the missing review from last week.  It was recommended to me by a friend when it was free on Amazon and it’s certainly one of the best books I’ve read in a long time.

 

 

Thursday

The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima

  • A review of The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima.  I’ve been rushing through her series lately and am currently on the final book so I think that’s a good indication of the quality.

 

 

Friday

  • Book Blast: The Lost Duchess by Jenny Barden

Saturday

  • Discussion: Unadaptable Books.