Age of Ra [Paperback]

James Lovegrove (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 3, 2009

An alternate history of the world where the Egyptian gods have defeated all others and have carved up the planet between themselves. Only a band of Freedom Fighters and their enigmatic leader can free the Earth from their divine tyranny.

--This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Ancient Egyptian gods have defeated other gods (including Jehovah, Allah, Odin and Zeus), and now specific dieties control various earthly power blocs in Lovegrove's thought-provoking futuristic adventure. The gods gain strength from their followers' worship, so each nation lives according to its god's demands, up to and including warring with other countries. When British Lt. David Westwynter leads his paratroopers into a desert reconnaissance mission, arming them with god-powered light weapons, medieval flails and ancient maces, they encounter mummies and annihilating duel-cell fusion bombs. In Freegypt, the only country not controlled by religion and a specific deity, David meets the enigmatic masked Lightbringer, who challenges the gods for control of the earth. Lovegrove (Provender Gleed) deftly weaves social commentary on religion, family, love and war into the contest between theocracy and humanism. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Mass Market Paperback edition.

Review

"James Lovegrove has become to the 21st century what JG Ballard was to the 20th..." - The Bookseller "Pick up James Lovegrove's latest novel and you can rest assured that you are in the safe hands of a master craftsman." - SFX on Provender Gleed "One of the most interesting and adventurous British SF writers..." -The Bookseller --This text refers to the Kindle Edition edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Black Library (August 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1844167461
• ISBN-13: 978-1844167463
• Product Dimensions: 6.7 x 4.2 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 2.9 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,486,080 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A fantastic idea squandered, May 3, 2010

By 

James Seger (The Woodlands, TX United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Age of Ra (Mass Market Paperback)

Okay. I freely admit it. I picked this book up because of the cover. Take a second to check it out. Pretty cool, isn't it? My wife said it looked more like a video game than a book and I guess she's right.

So the cover pulled me in, but it's the synopsis that hooked me. The Egyptian pantheon defeated all other gods and is now the single world religion. Except for in their home land, now renamed Freegypt (how precious is that?) where a sort of humanist messiah is planning to overthrow the gods. Now that's different. I had visions of a Dune-like (or Watchmen-esque if you prefer) epic of innovative world-building. What would the Earth be like if the Egyptian pantheon (and by extension ancient Egyptian culture) held sway over the world?

Age of Ra does go into that a little bit. But this book is more action/military sci-fi than anything else. To be sure, the book is fun to read and the action is handled pretty well. But I have to say that the world building is disappointing. I would like to have known more about the effect the gods had on politics. What was presented seemed a little too close to our current status qou, with the Egyptian Pantheon layered over the top. We hear about Ba (a mystical source of power obtained by proper devotion to one's god) powered weapons, but the rest of the world seemed pretty untouched. There are passing references to family cartouches and vehicles have something called drive spheres (which aren't ever really described), but mainly the world outside the main conflict is either unexplained or under-explained.

If you know going in that this is the novel version of a summer blockbuster action movie, it is pretty well written. In some ways, the tone of the book reminded me of another sci-fi action book, David Gunn's Death's Head. Both tell serious war stories brimming with action and violence that can be surprisingly humorous at times. Age of Ra didn't have the flourish and depth that Death's Head did, but James Lovegrove did a good job on his action and pacing. Battles were clearly described and I never got lost in the thick of things. His character's stories are interesting enough and you do feel like the characters are making the decisions they make due to who they are rather than because the author was running them through the paces.

I would have liked the gods to have been portrayed as a little more... godly. These are near immortal beings who don't measure time the same way we do and can be in multiple places at the same time. The author tells us this, yet has Osiris call his wooden phallus (it's a long story) a 'fake cock'. Another god tells Ra to 'sod off'. That would work if the gods were being played for laughs, but since they otherwise do speak in pseudo-archaic language, the times they use slang pulled me out of the story. Also, though they are a small part of the book, the mummy warriors seemed extremely silly. Though I believe the author did his home work on Egyptian culture and mythology, walking mummies have more to do with Hollywood than Horus.

I'm kind of stuck on this one. One the one hand, it is very, very well written for what it is. On the other, I was expecting something different than what I got. I'm not sure it is really fair to blame the book for not being what I hoped for, but I was still disappointed with it nonetheless.

He has written a follow-up called Age of Zeus that also sounds promising, but based on my experience with this one, I'll be skipping it.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars As Above, So Below, December 15, 2009

By 

Keith W. Harvey "Keith Harvey" (Dallas, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Age of Ra (Paperback)

Carl Jung believed firmly in the ancient expression, "as above, so below," from the alchemical text, The Emerald Tablet. For the follower of ancient hermeticism this expression holds the key to all the mysteries of the universe. Jung used the formula to explain the relationship between the unconscious and conscious mind, whereas Hermes Trismegistus, the author of The Emerald Tablet, saw it as a key to open the magic inherent in the world.

The ultimate meaning of the adage is that the macrocosmos is mirrored in the microcosmos and that God is the same as man.

James Lovegrove uses this formula as the organizing principle of his tightly-crafted novel, The Age of Ra, to create two worlds: earth far in the future, where the Egyptian gods have defeated all other gods and divided the earth into warring factions, each aligned with a god from the pantheon; and the pantheon itself, with all its petty struggles and jealousies.

Lovegrove, therefore, tells four tales with four parallel arcs within this format: (1) the story of the gods and their movement in the pantheon; (2) the personal tale of the godly struggle between Set, Osiris, Isis and, Set's wife, Nephthys; (3) the war between the worldly factions and their struggle for dominance; and (4) the personal struggle between Lieutenant David Westwynter, a British soldier, and his younger brother Steven.

Ultimately, the novel is about fratricide and sibling rivalry, both on earth and in heaven.

The novel begins as military science fiction. David Westwynter and his paratroop unit drop behind enemy lines in the Arabian desert to rendezvous with an American unit. The British Commandos, commanded by Westwynter worship Osiris, whereas their American counterparts follow Horus. Together the two factions are waging a secret war against the Nephthysians.

Lovegrove is a good writer and he immediately establishes the rules. The novel is told from the point of view of David Westwynter; it is a tightly-constructed narrative with a no-nonsense prose style. The British commandos are an elite fighting group and we are on solid military science ground here, following the team to the rendezvous point. However, Lovegrove quickly lets us know that he is not writing a standard military science fiction novel. Our first clue is that the men carry Ba weapons and the battle locations are ancient locations, re-animated to a future context. And by the end of the chapter, the mummies arrive.

Even though Lovegrove clearly employs elements of myth, horror, and science fiction, the novel doesn't feel like a post-modernist romp. Instead, it reminds me of the movies and novels I liked as a kid. More particularly, the story of David Westwynter and his brother Steven is reminiscent of films like "Beau Geste," "The Charge of the Light Brigade," and "The Four Feathers." The difference here, of course, is the blending of three speculative tropes with the traditional British romantic novel of the early twentieth century: military science fiction, Egyptian mythology, and horror (more specifically--the mummy as horror).

The strength of the novel lies in its traditional underpinning and Lovegrove's thorough understanding of myth. To give just one example: David Westwynter rebels against his rich upper-class British family and joins the army when his younger brother dies in a sea battle. After his capture and escape from the Nephthysians, Westwynter is rescued by freedom fighters from Freegypt. The leader of the fighters is a young woman, who tells him that they are followers of the Lightbringer. The Lightbringer is an enigmatic man, who wears a mask to hide his disfigured face. After the protagonist meets the charismatic Lightbringer, he decides to join the Freegyptian's cause to throw off the rule of the gods and to abandon his allegiance to Osiris and England. This is the stuff of British romantic fiction. One novel that I read over and over as a kid was Thomas Costain's The Black Rose. In that novel a young Anglo-Saxon lord flees Norman rule to win fame and fortune in Cathay, find true love, and return to England. A similar plot is working here.

However, this is not to be interpreted as a criticism of Lovegrove's novel. If you like historical adventure stories, with a touch of the British Empire, à la Kipling and Costain, then this book is for you. Additionally, Lovegrove follows the Aristotelian verities throughout to create a well-written, tightly constructed novel.

The only criticism that I have of the novel is that the gods receive short shrift. However, they are so annoying in their childish displays that, ultimately, I was glad to be rid of them.

In the final analysis, The Age of Ra is a tightly-crafted novel, loyal, to the Aristotelian verities, a strong narrative, with well-developed central characters, and a nod to British adventure stories of the forties and fifties.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars If you love Ancient Egyptian mythology...., February 6, 2011

By 

M Christopher - See all my reviews

This review is from: Age of Ra (Mass Market Paperback)

If you love Ancient Egypt and the myths of the land then I highly suggest you read this book. It's not ground breaking but it's an extremely fun read. Fans of SF-military novels may wish to get at their local library however, the book is more philosophical than it is violent. At any rate, I found the story entertaining and the ending satisfying, though I wish this could have been a series rather than a one-shot so that more details on the world and the god-tech could have been given. This book is an excellent attempt based around gods and myths that you don't get to read much about compared to Greek and Norse mythology. For the low price of $7.99 this book was worth every penny and more.