Maggie Owen is an archaeologist, invited to Egypt to help uncover the tomb of Ramose Nakh-Min, a high-ranking official under Pharoah Akhenaton, the “heretic king.” She’s already found the Book of the Dead, used to weigh his accomplishments and failures in the Afterlife, and is rapidly falling under both Ramose’s spell and that of the land in which he lived over three millennia before. She’s been noticed by two men in this life also. One is Sayed, one of her foremen, American-educated and friendly. The other man is Jehan Es-senusi, who openly dislikes Maggie. He considers a woman crazy to want to dig in the sand and he especially avoids her because she has blonde hair and green eyes—jinn’s eyes...demon’s eyes...he calls them. Sayed doesn’t like Jehan, either, accusing him of being a sorcerer, descended from the very priests who led the rebellion against Ramose’s pharaoh. Sayed gives her an ancient amulet—a blue scarab—which has been in his family for generations. It’ll protect her from Jehan, he says.
Maggie soon discovers she has more to worry about than her eye and hair color, when, as she’s exploring Ramose’s tomb, she discovers a second amulet, the twin to the one Sayed gave her. Then she’s stumbled upon Jehan who’s in the process of doing a little looting. He rants something about wanting her power, there’s a struggle, and the two amulets touch…
The next thing she knows, Jehan, the tomb and the world as she knows it is gone. Maggie’s still in Egypt but a very changed one. Did she wander onto the set of an on-location sex-and-sand movie? Not a chance. The magic of the scarabs have whisked her to Ramose’s time, and she’s now a stranger in a strange land though she knows more about its future than its own people do. It’s also a land where a blonde-haired stranger with jinn eyes is suspect from the very beginning. Captured, she’s taken to the master of the estate where she suddenly appeared, and…
3400 years in the past, Maggie finds the man she’s destined for. Ramose Nakh-Min. Alive and handsome and fighting to prevent the throne from being toppled. It’s a battle she already knows he’s destined to lose, but perhaps minor parts of that history can be changed. She certainly hopes so, for she’s begun having visions of her old life…of Ramose’s tomb…and the Egypt of her own day…and knows her time with this man who openly declares his love for her is growing shorter and shorter with each moment…
MY OPINION: Time-travel. Is there anyone who knows I don’t like this genre? I do love Egyptian stories, however, so I’m in a push-pull here. Following my promise to be impartial, let me say: Don’t let my prejudice stop you from reading this tale because it’s a good one! There’s plenty of detail, good dialogue, and a story that doesn’t exactly follow the usual person-from-the-future-now-in-the-past outline. Cynic that I am (and this is a bit of a spoiler, so please skip if you don’t want to know) I half-expected Maggie to return to the present and meet someone who would be the descendant of her lost-love, the man who died 3400 years before her birth. The author doesn’t do that but she does brings us a Happily Ever After which will satisfy everyone, while tying up a good many loose ends. A couple of minor historical inaccuracies notwithstanding (and they don’t hurt the story a bit!), this is a book to curl up with and enjoy. You’ll like it!
Lovely cover, too.
Egyptian Heart is available from Damnation Press, a division of Eternal Press.
This novel was supplied by the author and no remuneration was involved in the writing of this review.
