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Review title: A tragic waste of the time and talent of a terrific writer
Product review: Uninteresting, purposeless characters lost in a book in which they obviously have no desire to appear -- I am a strong fan of Cecelia Holland, have been since "The Firedrake," and found myself checking and rechecking the front cover because I could not believe this was a Holland book. Howard Carter is a faceless, personality-deficient automaton, the Egyptians are tiresome paper dolls. I still cannot understand why on earth Holland would have written this, let alone let it go to print.Skip this one and go directly to "Jerusalem" and "Great Maria" or any of Holland's wonderful prior works such as "Until the Sun Falls," "Rakossy," "The Kings in Winter" and "Two Ravens." Why these are OP I cannot fathom, but they are readily available at used book services on line, and are worth seeking out. Please pass on this hopeless, fortunately uncharacteristic waste of time and paper.
