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Title: interesting but disappointing
Review: Yet another interesting concept, well begun, but ultimately retreating to cliché. The first half of the book is quite good - detailing the travels of an embassy from Louis IV to the Negus (emperor) of Abyssinia in 1699. The novelist makes good use of the intrigues and mistrust among the various Catholic and other Western factions. The hero is a young herbalist whose medical knowledge gives him near miraculous powers, and provides several easy escapes from intricate plot devices. But these sections do impart a good sense of what it might be like to travel in these then unknown parts of the world, down the Nile, through Egypt and the Sudan, and ultimately to Ethiopia. (A good map would have been handy for this, as the areas involved are not well-known, even today.) But, about half way through, the descriptions and background can't hide the predictability of the plot, and the Candidean romantic subplot detracts from the overall effect.
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