I've read many books by Pauline Gedge and always find them intricately detailed, carefully plotted and generally interesting. The books tend to cover vast periods of time (Child of the Morning covered Hatshepsut's life from her early teens to her death), which gives the reader a little bit of a feeling of unreality, given the scope. For me, I feel Gedge's books tend to move slowly, which can be frustrating while I'm reading, but at the end, I reflect and feel that on the whole, I have enjoyed a great story told properly.
However, in the case of The Hippopotamus Marsh, it seemed that the entire book was a set-up to introduce the second and third books in the trilogy. Seqenenra Tao is governor of a section of Egypt which has been ruled by foreign kings from Hyksos. Seqenenra is descended directly from the pharoahs of the 17th dynasty. His family is relegated to obscurity in Weset, which doesn't cause as much angst as I might have thought. Pharaoh is seen as a god in Egypt, and irregardless of the fact that the current pharaohs happen to be conquerors not native to the area means little. Deeply ingrained in the characters is a respect for Pharaoh as well as something called Ma'at, which I gathered to mean a sort of 'divine rightness of things' but the wikipedia entry is more clear. Rebelling against the foreign pharoahs would be to go against the gods and unbalance Ma'at, and Seqenenra's family is very much against that idea.
Apepa, in order to test Seqenenra, sends ridiculous requests. He claims that the hippopotamuses are disturbing his sleep far away with their cries. Seqenenra sends a clever reply that he will make muzzles for the hippopotamuses, but the absurd requests do not cease. Eventually, Seqenenra feels forced to gather an army and move against Apepa. Which he does, not knowing that his own son has been providing information (against his will) to Apepa's agents. The battle against an overwhelming force leads to Seqenenra's death and eventually the death of Seqenenra's oldest son Si-Amun as well as Apepa's agent. Apepa makes an appearance in Weset and pronounces his judgment that the family will be broken up and sent into internal exile, with the youngest daughter, Tani, to be held for the good behavior of her siblings (Kamose, Ahmose, Ahmose-nefertari), her mother Aahotep and her grandmother Tanisheri, as well as her nephew (Ahmose-onhk). Kamose, heir to his father's position, decides to revolt. And that is where we are left at the close of the novel.
I know what happens here, thanks to a 3 week long obsession a few months ago that consisted of me reading every wikipedia entry on the dynasties of Egypt. Kamose takes up the mantle of revolt, falls in battle, his mother Aahotep as well as his sister Ahmose-nefertari, become warriors and fight until Ahmose is able to take up the fight. Ahmose eventually reconquers Egypt and becomes the founding father of the 18th dynasty, typically considered to be the peak of Egypt's power. Famous members include Akenaten and Nefertiti, Ramesses II, Nefertari and Khaemweset.
My feeling about this novel can be summed up thusly: throughout the book, everyone was concerned with disrupting Ma'at. However, if the foreigners seized control of Egypt to become pharaohs, did that not firstly disrupt Ma'at and therefore, acts to restore power to the royal family would therefore be attempting to bring Ma'at back into balance. Of course, this is not considered until the last few pages of the novel. I, however, wanted to shake the characters until they recognized this starting at the beginning.
Given reviews on Amazon.com, the second novel in this trilogy The Oasis, is far more interesting. We shall see. Next up, Mirage, published as The Scroll of Saqqara elsewhere.
I do highly recommend some of
Gedge's other novels:
No comments:
Post a Comment