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annathepiperAs I've often posted about before, I'm a big fan of Elizabeth Peters' Amelia Peabody series. And as y'all might guess with my recent post about finishing up Queen of Souls, I dig me some Greek mythology. So when I happened across The Tomb of Zeus on the new releases shelf in the Mystery section at Barnes & Noble the other night, I couldn't help but be interested: a period novel set in the 1920's, a woman doing archaeology, and moreover, doing it on the isle of Crete. Bitchin'. Sign me up.
Overall this was a fun read, and I must give Ms. Cleverly points for some quite unconventional decisions about her heroine's backstory in a period mystery novel. First and foremost: she's actually met her love interest before, with all sorts of references to prior occurrences that sounded quite interesting and which I'm a little sorry we didn't actually get to see on camera. Second: she's actually not a virgin, which rather raised my eyebrows when I read it, but which also made perfect sense as soon as young Laetitia defended herself to William, the aforementioned love interest, about how entirely unfair it was that his sex was perfectly willing to overlook one of their own having affairs while holding the same behavior against hers. Plot-wise, we get quite the knotted little mess surrounding the death of the wife of Laetitia's host--which in turn leads to the discovery of all sorts of tasty family intrigue going on. There's plenty of lush descriptions of Crete and the people Letty meets, as well as references galore to the gods.
The only beefs I had with it, really, were that I found the pacing and arrangement of scenes occasionally strange and clunky... and that for a novel that was supposed to be about a young woman trying to launch a career as an archaeologist, the story actually took forever to get her doing some actual archaeological work. But those were minor beefs indeed and I may well have to keep an eye out for the next one in this series. Three and a half stars.
Overall this was a fun read, and I must give Ms. Cleverly points for some quite unconventional decisions about her heroine's backstory in a period mystery novel. First and foremost: she's actually met her love interest before, with all sorts of references to prior occurrences that sounded quite interesting and which I'm a little sorry we didn't actually get to see on camera. Second: she's actually not a virgin, which rather raised my eyebrows when I read it, but which also made perfect sense as soon as young Laetitia defended herself to William, the aforementioned love interest, about how entirely unfair it was that his sex was perfectly willing to overlook one of their own having affairs while holding the same behavior against hers. Plot-wise, we get quite the knotted little mess surrounding the death of the wife of Laetitia's host--which in turn leads to the discovery of all sorts of tasty family intrigue going on. There's plenty of lush descriptions of Crete and the people Letty meets, as well as references galore to the gods.
The only beefs I had with it, really, were that I found the pacing and arrangement of scenes occasionally strange and clunky... and that for a novel that was supposed to be about a young woman trying to launch a career as an archaeologist, the story actually took forever to get her doing some actual archaeological work. But those were minor beefs indeed and I may well have to keep an eye out for the next one in this series. Three and a half stars.