Few things are more frustrating than picking up a book by one of your favorite authors only to realize that it’s nowhere near as good as you were expecting. I experienced that very feeling when I finished House of Illusions by Pauline Gedge.
I’ve been a fan of Gedge ever since I read her Scroll of Saqqara, which is basically a retelling of the story of Prince Khaemwaset and the Book of Thoth. Her blend of history and fantasy made a huge impression on me, and it inspired me to write Evil in Thebes.
Unlike the Scroll of Saqqara, House of Illusions is a more traditional piece of historical fiction that is largely devoid of fantastic elements. Set during the reign of Ramesses III, it’s told from the perspective of three POV characters: Kamen, a young military officer; Kaha, a scribe who works for Kamen’s father; and Thu, a disgraced concubine living in exile.
Therein lies my biggest complaint about the book. As my regular readers know, I’m not a fan of multiple-POV characters to begin with, but the way it was handled here was particularly vexing. Even though the stories of Kamen, Kaha, and Thu do overlap, they seemed oddly isolated, despite the fact that they’re telling the same story. For example, in Kamen’s chapters, there’s a very interesting subplot wherein he starts to develop actual romantic feelings for Takhuru, the young lady to whom his father has betrothed him. She starts out as a spoiled little bitch, but she becomes much more sympathetic and interesting as the book proceeds. Unfortunately, once the narration switches to Kaha, she more or less vanishes from the story (though she continues to be mentioned in passing). The same thing happens to Kaha once it’s Thu’s turn to put on the narrator’s hat. I think it would have been a lot more satisfying if the reader had a chance to hear from each narrator throughout the course of the story instead of confining each one to a particular set of chapters.
The pacing also left something to be desired. There’s danger for the first 200 pages or so, but then it peters out and the last 200 pages are devoted to a long, drawn out resolution that’s more or less devoid of serious conflict. I also found that some of the ceremonial scenes dragged on and on, which is saying something since I usually have a high tolerance for such things!
Gedge excels, however, at bringing ancient Egypt to life. She does a great job of providing enough details to set the scene without deluging the reader with extraneous information. Even though Gedge uses first-person narrators, she manages to avoid having them give anachronistic descriptions of things that they wouldn’t have thought twice about in real life. For the most part, her depiction of Egypt is an accurate one, and she gets bonus points for using accurate names (though she does refer to the king by his modern name of ‘Ramesses the Third,’ which is slightly annoying). The only major research fail I saw was that she repeatedly mentions fountains. As far as I know, there’s no evidence for fountains of any kind in pharaonic Egypt.
Despite my disappointment, I’m still a fan of Pauline Gedge, and I’m still willing to read her other books. I just hope they’re more like Scroll of Saqqara!
Codex Lochianus 