Review: River God

I recently finished River God by Wilbur Smith, which is the first in a series about Ancient Egypt, and I am very much looking forward to the rest of the series and, assuming they're just as good, I am adding Smith to my list of favorite authors. (I even grabbed the first in his Africa Courtney family series.)

I have had this one on my Kindle waiting for a while; I really love historical fiction, and I am totally fascinated by Ancient Egypt, so I was really afraid this one would be a big disappointment because my hopes for it were so high, even though Smith has a great reputation. I'm glad I finally picked it up.

The book tells the story of a (as far as I can tell) fictional Pharaoh and his family during the invasion of the Hyksos. It has some great battle scenes, almost as good as those of Bernard Cornwell. It also tells the story of the Hyksos invasion, which turns out to be a pretty interesting period in Egyptian history, and it also tells the story of some pretty important developments in Egyptian civilization. It also contains a fair amount about the culture of Egypt, which is something I really look for in historical fiction.

Egyptian War Chariot

The narrator is an Egyptian slave, and the story for how Smith came up with the idea for his story is amazing - in the afterward of the book he explains that he was on archaeological dig of an anonymous queen's tomb and several scrolls were found. The scrolls were written by a man who seemed to be quite confident of his own abilities, but in an endearing way - according to Smith. This made Smith want to write a book with him as the main character, and the Egyptian series was born.

This is definitely going on my list of favorites, and I look forward to the rest of the series. I can definitely recommend to anyone interested in ancient Egypt.