After avidly devouring Christian Jacq’s novels as a teenager, no other book set in ancient Egypt could grab my attention long enough for me to finish reading it. So when I was asked to review The God’s Wife, I was very hesitant, knowing that I would be extremely biased against it and might give the author a negative review she would not deserve.
I needn’t have worried; as it turns out, I could not put this book down. I was hooked from the first page of the preface, where the author takes the time to set her story (and you know the read will be good when you are hooked at the preface). In fact, I have author Lynn Voedisch to thank for depleting my already dwindling stock of concealer, as I read her book twice in a row in the span of a week. As you can imagine, I did not get a lot of sleep and looked like I climbed straight out of Pharaoh’s tomb.
Part of The God’s Wife is set in one of the most fascinating times in ancient history, further enhanced by Lynn Voedisch’s captivating writing style. Furthermore, her descriptions make Ancient Egypt jump out of the pages with no long-winded descriptions weighing the plot down. I was particularly struck by the way the smell of the gardens seemed to pour out of the pages at times: “At the Pharaoh’s royal garden, a graceful woman appeared on the bridge over the pond of blue lotus blooms and preening ibis. A small fountain dribbled water channeled from the Great River, and all about grew the most elegant plants that a royal gardener could obtain. Lilies and jasmine sweetened the dry air — hot as the breath of a fevered lover. Vines snaked along the bridge railings. Trailing flowers sprang from trellises all about the fecund square. A fish plunked in the lake, a bird reached out his graceful beak, and then there was silence.” Paragraphs such as these interweave the magic of Ancient Egypt tightly to the plot.
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