Reviews by Abi

I loved this story, and the narrator does a wonderful job of bringing the characters to life. It is a love story, but not 'too soppy', though the ending is a little predictable. You get a good sense of what it must have been like living in London at this terrible time - the horrors and fears, grief and desperation, the ideas that people had about where the plague was coming from, how to avoid it and treat it, and what it was like to be confined in a plague-house, etc. I really enjoyed it and I'll be looking out for this author again.

I would have preferred to read this book myself, rather than listen to the audio version. The characters are well-rounded, descriptions of life in ancient times are full and cleverly done, the story addictive. As you follow Sinuhe with the telling of his life story, you get 'tastes' of almost every facet of life during those times: he visits the Pharoah's palace and a prostitute's house, he works in the embalming house and robs a tomb, he goes into the harem of the Baylonian King and he goes into battle; he buys a slave and also rescues one. It seems improbable that one man could have done all of these things, but the author holds it all together beautifully.

What spoils this version is the plod-plod-plod pace of reading by the narrator (tender love scenes depicted in the same matter-of-fact way as bloody battle scenes), and the strange pronounciation of certain words -ie, 'officer' is 'orficer', but 'punishment' is 'poonishment', 'comely' is 'comb-ly' and 'lithe' is 'lith'. He also uses startlingly strange voices for the characters; females sound whining and oily, males either have a strange gruff cockney twang (but still say 'orificer') or are a deeper version of the female oily-whine. Once you get past these oddities and stop focussing on them, you realize the book itself is superb.