Book Review - The God's Wife

The God's Wife by Lynn Voedisch (2013)  - Two young women fight for control over their lives separated by thousands of years but connected spiritually.  Rebecca is a dancer in modern Chicago who has been tapped to dance the lead in a new version of Aida.  Neferet is a 16 year old princess of Egypt.  A thin spiritual line connects them in time and space.  Each must find the solution to the challenges they face in worlds that are so profoundly different.

Let me say right at the start that I enjoyed Voedisch's writing.  It was engaging enough to make me want to keep reading.  Sadly the story itself is filled with enormous holes (WHY are these two young women connected?  Who is Sharif really?  What the hell is a stargate doing in this story?), several key characters and relationships are never developed or explored (Rebecca's family is left as rather cartoonish Iowa farm bumpkins) and the end of the story is...inexplicable?

The author has some really rich territory to explore here.  Looking at the place of women in ancient Egypt, especially the one designated the Wife of Amun, the God's Wife. She is a daughter of pharaoh and tossed into the thick of the politics of the Kingdom.  In comparison the internecine politics of a small dance company seem pretty trivial.  That's where the depth of the familial relationship in Iowa could have added so much.  Almost as if she realizes this Voedisch then begins launching increasingly inexplicable plot twists as we head toward that unsatisfying finale. The character of Sharif is this outline only villain who is never explained even when he becomes the center of one of the last minute plot bombs.

I literally sat poking at my Nook wondering where the rest of the book was when I reached the end.  The story had started to wobble alarmingly at that point and then it just suddenly seemed to collapse.  And it was over.  Rebecca and her story line get truly the dirty end of the stick here but Neferet's story line is given a silly storybook ending that just appears out of nowhere.  My very strong impression is that the author decided she'd invested enough time into this project and needed to move.

Unfortunately we're left with a stub of an interesting story that the author simply never made the effort to properly tell.

Very disappointing.  I don't hand out the rating below very often.

Rating - * Don't Bother