The Woman Who Would Be King: Hatshepsut's Rise to Power in Ancient Egypt

As an ancient history fanatic I quite enjoyed reading this book as its well written, by an author that has a brilliant background on the subject. At least to me it opened up the world of 1500 BC Egypt. And I learned a lot about the period and the status and cult of pharaoh’s.Yet I rank it with 3 stars only: While the period and practices are richly described, most is told in a narrative manner. I can see how this could work. But not for me as it starts to touch upon fiction. And I try to avoid historic fiction as it always raises endless questions and objections in my mind while reading - which is very annoying. In particular if it’s about more distant historic settings from more than a few hundred years ago. It’s almost impossible to recreate an inner self from so long ago without projecting modern human’s experience, feelings and values. So this leaves the narrative with a lot of conjecture, also because, as the author acknowledges, there is very little known about individuals from this era apart from the very dry official historic inscriptions. Now if the storyline was extremely compelling perhaps the approach would have been justified, but no. The historic context, although unusual, just doesn’t strike a big enough chord. So its not an Wolfhall or I Claudius.

I got this book along with a similar one for my friend for Christmas. She hasn't read them yet i don't think but the quality of the books were great and they arrived before Christmas too. :)

Loved this book very interesting

great read.

Excellent