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The plot revolves around the lives of two sisters, Nefertiti and Mutnodjmet. Since it is written in first person perspective from the point of view of Mutnodjmet, she is the protagonist and narrator, although in the setting in which she moves, Nefertiti is the focus of everyone's attention and the action of the story. Most of the plot revolves around Nefertiti's scheming to hold onto her position and gain further power, and Mutnodjmet's struggle to break free from her sister's influence. There are one or two plot twists... but they come at the expense of sacrificing historical accuracy for the surprise factor.

The writing felt very linear, very simplistic, and definitely could have benefitted from a couple of sub-plots and a more subtle interweaving of various strands. The language was rather basic, and there wasn't too much imagery apart from a very frequently repeated comparison of Mutnodjmet to a cat, because of her green eyes. The story focuses character development and dialogue between characters, but regrettably the actual dialogue was very forced and stilted and didn't flow like a real conversation, and the quality of portrayal of the characters is debatable. As a reader I was given the sense that the characters did have backgrounds, but these were never really explored at all in the story, at best they were referenced once or twice but no more, and certainly never exposed or fully explored. The characters didn't feel fully formed, and lacked a certain subtlety and complexity of personality. The pathos just wasn't there - it's not always understandable why a character makes the decisions they do, a good author will weave the pathos so well that the readers can understand the reasoning even of loathsome characters, but here in this book the characters sometimes make decisions that we can't follow, and we're just supposed to accept that they made the decision because they're a bad character and that's what they do.

I also did not get the sense that the characters grow over the course of the book; they stay pretty much the same throughout. Nefertiti does change her approach and reconcile to different policies in her governing of Egypt once her husband has been killed, but one doesn't get the feeling that she has been significantly affected by the disastrous events that have happened to her, that she feels regret or remorse or desperation, for example. As Akhenaten's queen, she acts simply as she wishes to increase her own power and securing his rule and Aten worship is the most expedient way of achieving it at the time; as ruler of Egypt in her own right she returns to the worship of Amun and condemns without emotion her late husband's heresy, and again it seems as though this is simple expediency; she is still trying to hold onto power by the most expedient means, she just doesn't care whether it's through one set of policies or another. I personally do not feel that the portrayal of the characters in this novel is true to their real life historical counterparts - the emotions just never seem to run to extremes, and neither does the plot really, whereas I feel that the real life people would have had a much bigger emotional stake in these earth-shattering events and a much stronger commitment and faith in their own personal choices.

Mutnodjmet is the protagonist, and yet she was bland and forgettable. She didn't really seem to have a character, and her only memorable trait was her knowledge of herbal remedies. I didn't buy her romance with Nakhtmin at all; instead of developing the initial intrigue in a natural way, their relationship suddenly jumps from the barest hint of interest on the general's part, to Mutnodjmet agreeing to a union and expecting a baby. She wasn't very fleshed out at all, and did not have much of a personality. Nakhtmin is dangerously close to becoming a stock designated love interest, i.e. not having any flaws, anything negative said about him is a lie, he doesn't really have any life of his own, and he serves as a reward for Mutnodjmet's character for all her years of service to Nefertiti. It is often mentioned that Ay, the father of the sisters, is the power behind the throne, but we never see scenes showing this, and why then does Egypt fall apart so badly if Ay is mostly in control of things? Moran, by saying that Ay deals with most government affairs, shoots herself in the foot really, because we must then put the disasters of governance down to Ay's incompetence. Likewise, we are told that Horemheb is military minded, ambitious, and not to be crossed. And yet his character does nothing in the book; he is betrayed, exiled, and imprisoned by Akhenaten and Nefertiti, and yet if his personality is as volatile as Mutnodjmet observes, why does he not then lash out in retribution? Yet when Nefertiti has need of his services, he is willing to obey at the drop of a hat.

Nefertiti is probably the character I'm most disappointed in as a portrayal. I just don't find her terribly plausible. It's clear from the beginning that she is selfish, lazy, and ambitious, as well as possessive, but she's portrayed as being essentially good despite these character faults - we are told that all her actions in backing up Akhenaten's policies are for the greater good - she does it so that she can retain her favour with Akhenaten and influence towards him towards better policies, which she only does a handful of times towards the end of the book when disaster strikes the royal city anyway! I don't believe that the historical Nefertiti, who was so deeply involved in her husband's schemes, could have taken the actions she did or have been a party to them without a serious belief and faith in Akhenaten's Aten worship and policies, perhaps naively and genuinely, or perhaps cruelly and deliberately. Akhenaten, the heretical pharaoh himself, is presented in a slightly odd way. If ever there were a man in history whose workings of the mind were a mysterious fascination, it's Akhenaten. It is obvious that here was a very highly complex and difficult to understand person, to some degree unfathomable. Moran's Akhenaten is very thinly sketched, and totally unsympathetic. His motivations are entirely hidden, and he basically just acts like a petulant child, making irrational and unexplained illogical decisions just because. I had no sympathy with the character at all, didn't really care when he died, and never understood why he did any of the things he did. This was a pale shadow of other historical fiction portrayals of Akhenaten, such as Pauline Gedge's Twelfth Transforming in which the Pharaoh is fascinating yet terrible.

As for the historical accuracy, as a qualified Egyptologist I can tell you that it wasn't great. I won't list all the errors here, but I will cover a handful of points. I didn't like the way Moran used the modern names of the cities instead of the ancient ones (it just sounds so incongruous to have characters talking about "Thebes" and "Amarna" when we know the Egyptians would have called those cities "Waset" and "Akhetaten"), and she condensed Nefertiti's final two pregnancies into one by having her give birth to twin girls. I was partially placated by the afterword in which Moran admits that Nefertiti never had twin girls, but she doesn't tell us why she did this. Perhaps she wrote the final two pregnancies into a twin birth because she felt it would get boring if Nefertiti had to go through six births of girls in the book. Moran goes on to say that other events are open to interpretation and that in those cases she has presented what she feels is the most probable version, for example, the question marks over whether Akhenaten ever shared a co-regency with his father, or whether Nefertiti ever reigned alone. Moran decides that both did occur, but I am afraid I must disagree with her interpretations here and it is my professional opinion that neither is the most probable interpretation. Certainly, we can't say definitively that Nefertiti was the same person as Smenkhare until we find the material evidence that proves this. If we're going to be picky, Mutnodjmet, the queen of Pharaoh Horemheb, may not have even been the same person as Nefertiti's sister - whose name was actually Mutbenret - there's certainly no evidence for it, other than their names are spelt similarly in hieroglyphs.

I am really hoping that Moran can improve her storytelling, as she's chosen an interesting period of ancient Egyptian history to write about, but it just didn't hit the mark for me due to the poor writing quality. Too often, Moran tells instead of shows, and towards the end of the novel it felt like the characters were swept along on the tide of events instead of reaching a logical conclusion. I'd also like to see her flesh out her characters more and not shy away from giving her readers a complex plot.

2 out of 10