The Pharaoh's Daughter - by Anna

     Welcome to TAJ! I hope y'all had a great weekend... School is over for me (yay!) and so I have a ton of free time to read, write, be lazy, etc. All those good things. So since I've been reading so much I figured I'd share a book I read recently that has gotten right up there with Lord of the Rings and Randy Alcorn books. That's an acomplishment, let me tell you.

     This book (drumroll, please) is called The Pharaoh's Daughter. It was written by Mesu Andrews, and it's about Moses' adopted, Egyptian mother from the Bible. I love historical, Biblical fiction, so I picked this one up as soon as I read the back at our library. So thankful I did!

     Since I'm awful at writing short descriptions, here's the one from the back of the book (pretty sure this isn't breaking a copywrite - if it is, sorry.)

Anippe has grown up in the shadows of Egypt's good god Pharaoh, aware that Anubis, god of the afterlife, may take her or her siblings at any moment. She watched him snatch her mother and infant brother during childbirth, a moment which awakens in her a terrible dread of ever bearing a child.

Now she is to become the bride of Sebak, a kind but quick-tempered Captain of Pharaoh Tut's army. In order to provide Sebak the heir he deserves and yet protect herself from the underworld gods, Anippe must launch a series of deceptions, even involving the Hebrew midwives - women ordered by Tut to drown the sons of their own people in the Nile.

When she finds a baby floating in a basket on the great river, Anippe believes Egypt's gods have answered her pleas, entrenching her more deeply in deception and placing her and her son Mehy, whom handmaiden Miriam calls Moses, in mortal danger.               

 As bloodshed and savage politics shift the balance of power in Egypt, the gods reveal their fickle natures, and Anippe wonders if her son, a boy of Hebrew blood, could one day become king. Or does the god of her Hebrew servants, the one they call El Shaddai, have a different plan - for them all? 

 

    AAAAHHHH. I can't take it, I love this book so much. I'm finding it hard to tell you what I like without giving things away. *evil laughter* Here's a list to make it easier:

Things I Liked:

• Character development... Some characters went in a way I really liked, while others that I liked originally turned to the Dark Side and plummeted into evil-ness. My emotions hurt. 
• Very long book, and I didn't want it to end. So that's good.
• The story line was to die for. So many plot twists and individual plots within the overarching plot and oh my goodness I can't take it.
• Anippe!! Kinda goes with character development, but I just love her through the whole thing. She has some major ups and downs.
• Two points of view. Towards the beginning the story is told from Anippe's point of view, and from Mered's (who works for Anippe's husband Sebak) and I liked the two different views on the same events, and how Mered's view of Anippe changed through the book
• Can I say the cover? I really like this cover... Anippe looks so pretty!
• Sebak. He broke my heart, so sweet and ugggg... I don't want to say anything else because it might give things away. But Sebak was amazing.
• There's a sequel!!! It's called Miriam and is also very good. (Hehe... yes, I read it.)

Things I Didn't Like:

• All the death (I won't say who)... My poor emotions were dying. Multiple times while I was reading it I just exploded in frustration. I seriously yelled (maybe shouted/spoke loudly - yell is a little extreme) at one of the characters once. Ask my family, they'll tell you.
• It was a tinsy bit confusing at times... but not much at all (compared to some other books I've read). I don't think the author could've made it not confusing. It kinda needed to be that way.
• Can't think of anything else... Maybe that there's only one sequel out so far?? I NEED MORE!!! ;)

     So, as you can see, I really, really liked this book. I would encourage you to go get it (buy or at your library) and read it as soon as is physically possible. Some other books I've read recently that I would encourage you to read this summer are: 

God's Smuggler by Brother Andrew; 

Chronicles of the Kings series by Lynn Austin

The Green Ember series by S.D. Smith

Lit!: A Christian Guide to Reading Books by Tony Reinke

The Letter for the King by Tonke Dragt

Modesty: More Than a Change of Clothes by Martha Peace and Kent Keller

I Kissed Dating Goodbye by Joshua Harris (more in this post about this and above)

King Alfred's English by Laurie J. White

Left Behind series by Tim LaHaye and Jerry Jenkins

     And if that doesn't last you until the Lord returns, I dunno what will. ;) That's a lot of books...

     If you have any suggestions for books I might like, please comment. As a book devourer, I'm always on the lookout for more meat. :) Thanks for reading!

~Anna