The Empire of Darkness
Queen of Freedom
By Christian Jacq  

     If you enjoy reading about Ancient Egypt, then you have probably been eagerly awaiting the next Christian Jacq novel; and here it is. His latest trilogy is set during the 17th century BC when the invasion and conquest of the Hyksos people had brought Egypt’s Middle Kingdom period to an end. Now the Egyptians are forced to obey their barbaric masters and the whole country has succumbed, apart from Thebes. Here the last pharaoh Teti the Small lives with her reduced household and her feisty daughter Ahotep, who is determined to drive out the invaders and win Egypt back for its own people. From her flight to the border, marriage to a humble gardener who is going to become pharaoh and her amassing of a private resistance army Ahotep is not going to give up until Egypt is back in the hands of the Egyptians.

     One thing that keeps me coming back for more is Jacq’s delightfully direct way of telling his tales, which are always full of energetic folk who do things immediately in a no-holds-barred, Old Testament sort of way, calling to mind the appeal of folk tales and legends. The stories always start immediately and continue at a brisk pace that makes them easy and fast to read, which isn’t everything, but which seems to suit the way Jacq writes them. I have encountered his books filed under fantasy as so many supernatural things happen, but a closer look reveals that this is merely the interpretation his characters put on the events and is in keeping with the beliefs of the time. It is true that this unsophisticated folktale-approach invariably means that his characters are either black or white with a few gray shadings in between and at times this can get a little one-dimensional. Also, the Egyptians are always the heroes and we only see their side of the story, which does not make for great literature either and they do tend to lose something in the translation from French into English, making the prose seem stilted at times. I think that if you want an in-depth novel with literary pretensions, these books probably aren’t for you, but if you like a good old-fashioned historical adventure you will probably lap them up. It can also be argued that his best-selling status speaks for itself!