Tome Thursday: Pharaoh

Hello everyone!

Back with my second blog of the week, this one about a book, and it wasn't really a difficult choice to pick considering it was the first one I grabbed during my vacation. The main reason behind this being that I wanted to read book number eight, but I had sort of forgotten what happens in book seven ... yes, it happens to me too, folks!

Especially since I took roughly forty new e-books with me, luckily only in electronic format or else I think my dad would have deposited me, books included, on the curb and drove on without us.

The book happens to be Pharaoh, written by David Gibbins, and as I've said it's book number seven in a series centering around an underwater archaeologist and his team, who do a lot of globe-hopping, history-discovering and general all-around interesting things.

Well, at least *I* find them interesting!

So to start off, I'm going to say a couple of things about the author since I haven't talked about him before. David Gibbins is an underwater archaeologist, novelist, and also lecturer. His books are mostly archaeological thrillers, but he does also have a purely historical series as well, and he derives his information from his own background of work and study, connects some interesting dots, and sometimes adds a snippet or two to make it all work. Fiction? Well, yes, just a little bit! But it's based off a whole lot of reality, which is why I enjoy it so much.

I stumbled upon his novel Atlantis by pure accident: I had seen the book before in the store, but it didn't ring any bells for me so I put it back. After going by the shelves the next couple of months with that book STILL sitting there ... well, I couldn't let the poor baby remain an orphan. I took it home, and never looked back since.

Atlantis, as I discovered afterwards, is actually the first of (currently) eight novels about underwater archaeologist Jack Howard, who is a scion of an ancient British house always somehow connected to the sea (whether they served in the Navy or went on Crusades), and has founded the International Maritime University, an organization which specializes in underwater excavations and discovering strange new worlds right here on Earth (yes, I had to borrow that). His best friend of twenty-some odd years and diving budy, Costas Kazantzakis (yes, he's very Greek) is the tech-savvy wizard of the main group. Maurice Hiebermeyer, the German on the team, and old schoolmate of Jack's, heads the Egyptian department, along with his former-student-turned-wife Aysha (Egyptian, by the way). There are sometimes other team members present, but mostly it's Jack and Kostas, a two-man army against history.

To be brief: in the first book, they discover Atlantis (aren't I an obvious one?!); in the second, Crusader's Gold, they hunt the Jewish Menora around the globe; the third, The Last Gospel, sees them searching for the written word of Jesus Christ; The Tiger Warrior is all about the Orient and finding Romans in China, as well as what happened to one of Jack's ancestors; The Mask of Troy delves into what truly happened during the Troyan war; in The Gods of Atlantis, we return to the story of book one, but delve deeper and farther back in ancient civilisation, to the first religions; and thus we come to Pharaoh (there's another book, Pyramid, but that one's for another blog). 

Also, side-note: in each of these books the artefacts Jack and Costas are after are usually sought by other, non-savoury parties, from Kazak warlords to Egyptian rebels, or old Nazi enforcers. There's always a modern twist. We even get some Italian mafia involved!

‘Where to, Jack? Sun, sand and martinis?’

‘Lots of sun, lots of sand, not so sure about the martinis. We’re going to a place impossibly far removed from here, but linked to it by that; by Akhenaten.’

‘Where?’

‘You ever ridden a camel before?’

‘Oh no. NOT camels.’

‘We’re going to the Nubian desert. To the Sudan.’

Jack and Kostas,

Pharaoh, p.50

But back to the topic of Pharaoh: in this one, we land ourselves in Egypt, after Maurice has practically begged Jack to come diving there for the better part of seven books (ironically, the first clue for Atlantis comes from an old mummy wrapping). So now IMU is here, and searching for one of the most elusive pharaoh's history has ever seen: Akhenaten, or Amenhotep IV before he changed his name. most commonly known as the father of the boy-king, Tutankhamun, husband of Nefertiti, and founder of the one-god religion that nearly tore Egypt apart. Jack and Costas are following clues found by both Maurice and Jack himself, searching for something that could be huge: Akhenaten's 'City of Light', the location of which is unknown today (obviously).

The book itself begins with Akhenaten locking all the old priests of Egypt into the temple of Sobek (for those less-savvy in Egyptian gods: he's the one with the crocodile head. Yep.) where one of Nile's giant crocodiles eats them. This then ensures that he can proceed with his plans of unifying all the gods into one. In present-day, Jack and Kostas are diving in the Nile to find that same temple, and a clue to the city they're looking for. The action is interspaced with a historic activity: the failed rescue mission to Khartoum and the relief of British General Gordon (which fails, by the way). Why is that important, you ask? Because the agent sent to deal with this is also a sort of archaeologist, and wants to find this City of Light. 

Unfortunately, Sudan isn't welcoming to the British, any more than it used to be in history, and Jack and Costas get deported after confirming a find of an old shipwreck for a private magnate (convenient, no?). 

And then the book ends with a different clue, found (wait for it) in Jack's old family home in England, which brings us back to Egypt, and the Pyramid of Menkaure, underneath which our heroes dive to find the City of Light.

Unfortunately, if you're thinking 'YES, HERE WE GO!', I have to disappoint you: this is where the book ends.

It's probably the most disappointing Gibbins book so far, considering it feels unfinished and like it got chopped up right before the real action started. Or maybe it's just me, but we never actually SEE what the two divers see as they go down under the pyramid, and it's kind of annoying haha. There's a lot of build-up and a lot of tension, a lot of history, but in the end ... we're sort of left hanging, so to speak.

Did I like the book? I did, but I'm convinced it got too long for the author and had to be split into two parts, since the story continues in Pyramid. 

And that, my dear readers, is a topic for next week's blog!

xx

*image not mine