Customer Reviews

The Mask of Ra

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Mr. P.C. Doherty, an accomplished mystery writer, has smoothly transitioned from his previous medieval novels to Ancient Egypt. The reading is easy and the plot line so good that you do not want to put this book down. Just when you think you have figured it out, a new element is deftly woven into the story. What really impressed me about the book, however, is the well researched period and the way the author is able to impart what life was like in Ancient Egypt. A good plot is essential, but without a good believable backdrop to the story, any book will falter. Mr. Doherty makes one believe that you are in the Egypt at 1497 BC. He holds the readers intrest not just with a terrific story, but with a well researched look into life and customs of that period. I would compare this novel favorably with Linda Robinson's "Lord Meren's Mystery" Series. The charcters in this novel are well thought out and developed becoming more that one dimensional. If one is facinated by, or intrested in, Ancient Egypt you will find the book a good read. The story, a tightly woven plot, and a facinating ending are a wonderful bonus. I hope that Mr. Doherty will continue the adventures of Chief Judge Amerotke. I would recommed this book to any mystery fan who enjoys a facinating well thought out story or to any history buff who would like to dream a little about an extraordinary period in Egyptian History.

I found the book "The Mask of Ra", by P. C. Doherty, to be mildly enjoyable. The historical background against which the story plays, namely the ascension of queen Hatshepsut (Hatusu) to the throne of Egypt, is a fascinating period of Egyptian history, and Doherty uses this background quite well. The plot, involving several deaths that have to be investigated by Amerotke, Pharao's Chief Judge, is also well thought out. Three aspects weaken the quality of the tale. Firstly, the writing has at times an amateurish quality to it, with weak dialogues or conceptual errors (for example, the political maneuvering at the court is equated by Hatusu with a game of chess, a pastime unknown in Egypt at the time). Secondly, the interplay between some of the characters is hard to conceive as representing social mores at the time; to illustrate, the level of familiarity between the Chief Judge and his servant Shufoy, or between the Queen and the Chief Judge, would seem to be totally out of place in a formal society such as Egypt's. Thirdly and expanding on the previous point, other aspects of daily life are presented with similar carelessness: again, and just to cite one example, it is difficult to imagine the Chief Judge moving around Thebes without a formal escort, including armed guards or charioteers. A more careful and believable presentation of social interactions in ancient Egypt can be found, among other places, in Robinson's Lord Meren tales (which in turn have, however, suffered from weak plots in more recent installments).

You know you are reading a great book when you are torn between not wanting the story to end and reading it through the night to find out what will happen next.
6 stars!

This book is I think very interesting and very easy to understand for anybody, even for people which english is as their second language. The presentation of this book is very formal way. I think the authour must be very famous because ofthis book. I'ver read many historical fiction books, but this is the first book that I found it very interesting and easy. I encourage people to read this book. I don't want to give them the summery of the book, because I want everyone to read this very interesting book.

This book was praised by several reviewers as giving a good picture of life in ancient Egypt, from which I can only deduce that the reviewers are as ignorant of ancient Egypt as the author himself. Many, many errors abound in this book: Queen Hatshepsut (called Hatusu in this book for God only knows what reason) thinks about the game of chess, unknown in ancient Egypt; scenes of battles with the Sea Peoples decorate walls, although the Sea Peoples were defeated in a later dynasty and were not a threat during the Eighteenth Dynasty in which this book is set; people have volumes of law books, instead of papyrus rolls or scrolls; when papyrus is mentioned, it is used interchangeably with parchment; Amerotke rides through town in a chariot (highly unlikely, as chariots were used for hunting and war, not transportation; horses were extremely expensive, and the mansions of the wealthy officials found at Amarna show no sign that horses were kept by the inhabitants); Amerotke's wife teaches her sons to read, though there is no evidence that even highly-born women were taught to read; the west bank, home of a thriving city populated in part--but by no means exclusively--by those who served the dead is portrayed as a sinister place rather than a vital city that had its own mayor, and presumably was much like any other Egyptian town; Amerotke passes through a Village of the Unclean as he goes to his home (a caste never mentioned in actual Egyptian texts; is this supposed to be Calcutta, Egypt?); embalming practices are misrepresented; a soldier who distinguished himself in battle wears a golden lotus, rather than the fly (insect) of valor with which pharaohs rewarded military men; etc. etc. etc.

There is probably no good reason for the average reviewer to know much about ancient Egyptian culture and mores, but the same cannot be said for an author who chooses to set a book in Eighteenth Dynasty Egypt. If he really thought Egypt interesting enough for the setting of a mystery, why on earth didn't he bother to do even a minimal amount of research? Apparently ancient Egypt wasn't THAT interesting, or he might have read a book or two on it. Nothing about the setting evoked in this book seems authentic. Even the names of some of the major characters are bizarre: the ancient Egyptian language of this period (and later periods, even the latest stage, Coptic) had no hieroglyph for the sound /l/, yet at least three characters have names that contain this sound; when Egyptians wanted to convey the sound in foreign names (such as those of the much later Ptolemaic rulers such as Cleopatra) they used a hieroglyph that was a combination of the letters /r/ and /w/. And why the name Norfret for Amerotke's wife, rather than the perfectly good Egyptian name Nefret (or Nofret), which meant "beautiful"?

But perhaps the book is well-enough written to make the casual reader gloss over these flaws? Well, no. The writing is equally inept, and reads as if the author hastily dictated the book into a tape recorder in order to get it down quickly, and then didn't bother to go back and clean up the occasional odd bit of punctuation, or the incomplete sentences, or the use of "growled" and "jibed" and other such unfelicitous words instead of "said" etc.

But does it work as a mystery? Unfortunately it fails here as well. Despite the fact that high-ranking members of the royal inner circle are being murdered right and left, some apparently by being lured away from their homes, Amerotke accepts a mysterious summons at face value and travels by himself to the west bank and almost certain ambush by a sinister circle of black-robed assassins. Right. And ultimately the mystery seems to hinge on a religious heresy that foreshadows the Amarna period in which Akhnaton chose to jetison the traditional Egyptian gods in favor of the solar god Aton--a bizarre period unlike anything in Egyptian history before or after the end of the Eighteenth Dynasty. In order to justify this anachronism, Doherty in a "Historical Note" at the beginning of the book claims that Egyptian religion was undergoing a shift during the reign of Thutmosis II and his successor Hatshepsut. It was undergoing no such thing. Egyptian religious beliefs were at no time either/or; the various cities and nomes had their own traditional gods, which were not jetisoned in favor of national gods (except during the exceptional Amarna period) but which could become more prominent when a royal dynasty from a certain area chose to elevate their local god. Such happened with Amun, a Theban god, who rose to pre-eminence during the reign of the Eighteenth Dynasty Theban monarchs; he was often linked with the powerful god Ra or Re, who since the Old Kingdom had been worshiped by the court.

If the reader is really interested in books with an ancient Egyptian setting, the excellent (but alas truncated) Lieutenant Bak series by Lauren Haney is strongly recommended. Ms. Haney has clearly done all of the research so obviously neglected by Mr. Doherty. The more modern series by Elizabeth Peters (the pen name of Barbara Mertz, who earned a PhD in Egyptology from the University of Chicago's Oriental Institute, set in Victorian Egypt (and England) and the delightful Mamur Zapt series by Michael Pearce, set in Egypt before and during World War I, are also recommended.

I am an avid reader of ancient Egyptian mysteries, and have read every one that I could find, including Peters, Haney and Robinson, whose works I consider to be very entertaining. It was with great expectations that I read The Mask of Ra--and I was quite disappointed. Mr. Doherty takes too many liberties with historical facts. I guess I should have been fairly warned by the character's names--very UN-Egyptian!
Besides having his own way with history, Mr. Doherty is, in my opinion, a poor author. His descriptive powers lack any emotion, and his descriptions of his characters lacks any verve.
The only thing this novel has in merit is to warn me against reading any further works from Doherty.

Well, I suppose I should be as cordial as possible about this book. Considering the fact that this P.C. Doherty fellow did spend enough time writing it. Although I hated it I don't want anyone to feel discouraged to read it because reading is reading, whether the novel was good or not.
After that being said, I'll now proceed to bash Doherty for his persistant focus on describing the clothing rather than the actual plot. The over use of descriptions of what the characters in the book are wearing, or where they happen to be standing do get rather boring after the first chapter. Expecially considering the bland dialogue between the characters.
The plot in itself was not uniteresting yet it was sloppy. It does hold a sort of suspense for a while, then you turn the page to chapter 3. If this novel was written with more dialogue from each character rather than narrative it would've probably earned more stars and a heck of a lot more of my attention.

Paul Doherty is one of my favourite authors and I am always delighted to find one of his books that I have not read before. This one has been a change of direction for the author and he seems to have pulled it off, although for me personally it was not one of my favourites.
The book is set in Ancient Egypt at the time of Pharaoh Tuthmosis II. The Pharaoh is returning to Thebes after successfully doing battle with the sea raiders in the Nile Delta. However there are factions who are less than happy to seem him return. Reunited with his wife and people Tuthmosis celebrates his homecoming, but within an hour he is dead. With the aid of Amerotke, a respected judge his wife Hatusu sets out to find the perpetrators of the crime and embarks on a path destined to reveal many secrets.

Though I enjoy this series very much, I would be happier if Doherty had admitted that his stories very much distort the actual history of Hatusu's reign (as we know it). It actually took Hatusu 6-7 years to declare herself pharoah, and she did it through political maneuvering, not conquest. Tushratta, the Mitanni king Hatusu is supposed to have defeated, didn't rule until the time of Amenhotep III, and, in fact, Hatusu's regime is noted for its inattention to military control of areas east of Egypt. Doherty claims Hatusu learned military tactics from her father, but if the chronology he uses is correct, her father died when she was about 3 years old. Also, where in the stories is Nefrure, Hatusu's daughter by Thutmosis II? She should be around somewhere, as Senenmut was responsible for her care. However, I must say that the series has inspired me to read up on the history of the period, about which I previously knew nothing, so I suppose that is a plus. If you are a new reader, though, please don't take this as an accurate depiction of the events of the time.

I loved this book. The mystery is fair, and the best guess estimates of daily Egyptian life is interesting enough of its own accord even if the mystery had not been good. I recommend all of the Amerotke series.