Hana's Reviews > Mara, Daughter of the Nile

This was great fun and a smooth, easy read--in fact I fairly tore through this one and could not wait to find out what happened.

McGraw knows how to keep the plot moving and her heroine, Mara the slave girl, is spunky, intelligent and conniving enough to be plausible in her new role as a double agent in the royal court. I'm far from being an Egyptologist, but I've traveled to Egypt and spent enough time in the Egyptian galleries of various museums to know that McGraw gets all sorts of little details correct: the right hand to left shoulder salute, the jewelry and clothing, the terrifying tombs in the Valley of the Kings. No one knows what ancient Egyptian sounded like, but McGraw mixes in enough likely phrases to make the dialog quite believable.

I knocked off one star because I thought both of Mara's new masters were too casual in their oversight of this 'agent', and not menacing enough; also I wish we had learned more of Mara's past history, especially how she learned to read and move so easily among the upper classes.

But no matter, it was a delightful book and definitely rated G for general audiences (except, of course, this is ancient Egypt, so there are oodles of pagan gods and weird burial practices).