The Anubis Slayings

Rating:
Summary: When's the next one out?
Review: As an enthusiast (not archeologist) of Ancient Egypt, I find that all of his books make Ancient Egypt come alive, as if you are really there. I don't particularly care if camels weren't introduced at that time or locks hadn't been invented yet. I don't want a history lesson, I want a book/story which you can picture yourself being alongside the characters. Paul's books have done that.
His mediaeval series with Brother Athlestan are also fantastic too. I always eagerly await the next one.....

Rating:
Summary: I can sum up this book in one word..
Review: Bloody.
More people are killed this time around that in the first two books. The mystery is so complex that I had to read the ending over three times to put all of the pieces together.
I can't wait for the next one.

Rating:
Summary: Absorbing historical mystery with a few snarls....
Review: I have always been intrigued by Egypt and it's history. Must come from my Dad who is an archaelogical enthusiast especially for the Middle East. Anyway, I really enjoyed finding a new author within this particular subfield of mysteries. I don't have enough background in ancient Egypt to be critical of the names or historical useage of the time period. For the most part the book was very readable, and fun, if a bit on the bloody side. I wonder if Egypt was always that dismissive of the value of a human life. I surmise that they were since the Pharoahs had no problems with using servants and slaves to build their great tombs, and then killed all of those people. That attitude must have filtered down to everyone eventually. It's amazing that this 'civilization' lasted as long as it did, when they were so uncivilized!

My only complaint about the book has to do with the author's continued use of the word 'retorted'. No one 'retorts' that much!!! Because the author used a lot of conversations to convey the story, he constantly used "he said", "she stated", and the word "retorted" seemed to be every other one. Get a thesaurus, PLEASE! Or read some more grammar books about how to write conversations. This is not just the author's fault...editors should be looking for this type of problem and making suggestions. Sounds like nitpicking on my part, but I will stop reading books and especially series, if the language is not up to par (even if the history is ok).

Otherwise, I enjoyed learning more about the time period. I hope the author is doing his research so I don't get misinformation about that particular part of world history.

Karen Sadler