Karen Essex

High drama and ancient history combine in this novel of the early life of Egypt's infamous queen, at once a beautiful seductress, brilliant politician, and the most powerful ruler of her time.

Kleopatra

The final third of this book was so much better than the rest of the book it almost made me give the whole thing 4 stars. I think 3.5 stars is fair, though.

Kleopatra follows the early life and childhood of the famed Egyptian queen, detailing the lesser-known facts about her, Egyptian politics, and her family before her infamous meeting with Julius Caesar. Many works of fiction solely focus on Kleopatra's adult life, when she was restored to her throne, and her rule afterward; so this book's premise seemed new and refreshing to me. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat. While the author digs into Egyptian, and even Roman, politics that were not familiar to me, the quality of the book is decreased so much by the unnecessary and quite vulgar and explicit sex scenes. I don't see what they added to this book at all, especially because they do not involve our main character, Kleopatra (obviously, because she's still a child at this point), but many of these scenes do involve her accidentally spying on others. These scenes are out of nowhere and add nothing to the plot or story; it's like they're thrown in for shock effect because they're so descriptive for no reason. They really bring down the quality of the entire book. And, worst of all, these explicit scenes seem to play into stereotypes about the Hellenistic Greek and Egyptian world of Alexandria by showing that everyone was straight up depraved! Thankfully Kleopatra herself does not partake in anything like this (and even when she is a young adult at the end of the book and takes her first lover, the author does not describe those love scenes in detail at all, so it was just confusing).

This, combined with the constantly switching perspectives at the beginning of this book nearly made me put it down and DNF. I continued reading, though, and was glad I did because the final third of the book (even though the first two-thirds of the book had their moments) was exceptionally good. We really see Kleopatra come into her own, we see how her mind works, and I enjoyed her character immensely. I especially enjoyed reading about her time in Upper Egypt. Earlier in the book, I enjoyed reading about Alexandria and her time in Rome, but Kleopatra was still a child and I did not enjoy her character as much. It's hard for authors to accurately and authentically write child characters who are also not annoying, so I'm not faulting Karen Essex here. 

Going back to an earlier point, I know a lot about Kleopatra's later life, but not very much about her childhood (the only other book I've read in recent memory that deals with this is The Memoirs of Cleopatra, which is a phenomenal book BTW). So, again, I really enjoyed learning about Kleopatra's father and her ancestors. I just think some of the characters and sex scenes took away from what could have been a really great book (also, I have never complained about love scenes in a book before, just to be clear; so I really think they were just too much here).

There is some truly beautiful writing and wording in this book, from the very first lines. However, Essex does so much telling and not showing. Major important events are reduced to a character remembering them, or talking about them, instead of us actually getting to read about them first-hand. Also, the author, IMO, includes too much of the Roman perspective, especially in the last few pages. It's just interesting to me what she decides to include and what she excludes and reduces to the dreaded "telling and not showing."

Overall, this book really grew on me the more I read it, and I do plan to read the sequel eventually; this book wasn't so bad that it's off the table. Finally, one last critique is that I know this book was either self-published or indie published, but there were so many mistakes and typos. To deal with some interesting subject matter combined with some great writing and descriptions, these typos and odd paragraph breaks and lack of quote marks decreased the quality a little.

It's a big feat to undertake writing about young Kleopatra, and the author did a fair job. You might have to skim some parts of this book, but overall I think it was worth not DNFing. 

Amanda

The final third of this book was so much better than the rest of the book it almost made me give the whole thing 4 stars. I think 3.5 stars is fair, though.

Kleopatra follows the early life and childhood of the famed Egyptian queen, detailing the lesser-known facts about her, Egyptian politics, and her family before her infamous meeting with Julius Caesar. Many works of fiction solely focus on Kleopatra's adult life, when she was restored to her throne, and her rule afterward; so this book's premise seemed new and refreshing to me. Unfortunately, it fell a little flat. While the author digs into Egyptian, and even Roman, politics that were not familiar to me, the quality of the book is decreased so much by the unnecessary and quite vulgar and explicit sex scenes. I don't see what they added to this book at all, especially because they do not involve our main character, Kleopatra (obviously, because she's still a child at this point), but many of these scenes do involve her accidentally spying on others. These scenes are out of nowhere and add nothing to the plot or story; it's like they're thrown in for shock effect because they're so descriptive for no reason. They really bring down the quality of the entire book. And, worst of all, these explicit scenes seem to play into stereotypes about the Hellenistic Greek and Egyptian world of Alexandria by showing that everyone was straight up depraved! Thankfully Kleopatra herself does not partake in anything like this (and even when she is a young adult at the end of the book and takes her first lover, the author does not describe those love scenes in detail at all, so it was just confusing).

This, combined with the constantly switching perspectives at the beginning of this book nearly made me put it down and DNF. I continued reading, though, and was glad I did because the final third of the book (even though the first two-thirds of the book had their moments) was exceptionally good. We really see Kleopatra come into her own, we see how her mind works, and I enjoyed her character immensely. I especially enjoyed reading about her time in Upper Egypt. Earlier in the book, I enjoyed reading about Alexandria and her time in Rome, but Kleopatra was still a child and I did not enjoy her character as much. It's hard for authors to accurately and authentically write child characters who are also not annoying, so I'm not faulting Karen Essex here. 

Going back to an earlier point, I know a lot about Kleopatra's later life, but not very much about her childhood (the only other book I've read in recent memory that deals with this is The Memoirs of Cleopatra, which is a phenomenal book BTW). So, again, I really enjoyed learning about Kleopatra's father and her ancestors. I just think some of the characters and sex scenes took away from what could have been a really great book (also, I have never complained about love scenes in a book before, just to be clear; so I really think they were just too much here).

There is some truly beautiful writing and wording in this book, from the very first lines. However, Essex does so much telling and not showing. Major important events are reduced to a character remembering them, or talking about them, instead of us actually getting to read about them first-hand. Also, the author, IMO, includes too much of the Roman perspective, especially in the last few pages. It's just interesting to me what she decides to include and what she excludes and reduces to the dreaded "telling and not showing."

Overall, this book really grew on me the more I read it, and I do plan to read the sequel eventually; this book wasn't so bad that it's off the table. Finally, one last critique is that I know this book was either self-published or indie published, but there were so many mistakes and typos. To deal with some interesting subject matter combined with some great writing and descriptions, these typos and odd paragraph breaks and lack of quote marks decreased the quality a little.

It's a big feat to undertake writing about young Kleopatra, and the author did a fair job. You might have to skim some parts of this book, but overall I think it was worth not DNFing. 

Kleopatra

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