A Novel with Thoughts and Ponderings

LILY OF THE NILE

Author: Stephanie Dray ISBN:9780425238554 1/2011 HISTORICAL/PARANORMAL Publisher: BERKLEY
Time Period: Ancient Egypt

Lily of the Nile by Stephanie Dray
Heiress of one empire and prisoner of another, it is up to the daughter of Cleopatra to save her brothers and reclaim what is rightfully hers...

To Isis worshippers, Princess Selene and her twin brother Helios embody the divine celestial pair who will bring about a Golden Age. But when Selene's parents are vanquished by Rome, her auspicious birth becomes a curse. Trapped in an empire that reviles her heritage and suspects her faith, the young messianic princess struggles for survival in a Roman court of intrigue. She can't hide the hieroglyphics that carve themselves into her hands, nor can she stop the emperor from using her powers for his own ends. But faced with a new and ruthless Caesar who is obsessed with having a Cleopatra of his very own, Selene is determined to resurrect her mother's dreams. Can she succeed where her mother failed? And what will it cost her in a political game where the only rule is win-or die?

RRAH's THOUGHTS AND PONDERINGS: 4 Rose Read

LILY OF THE NILE is very different from Michelle Moran's CLEOPATRA'S DAUGHTER, which also examines Princess Selene's life immediately following her parents' death and her tenure in Rome, before she married Juba.  This Selene is much more...aggressive, in a way.  Not stronger, but more cunning.  Whereas Moran's Selene understood her place and sought to live a life outside of her parents' shadow, this Selene strives to remember them in everything.  To remember Egypt, and who she would have been if things had been different.

Dray also is more liberal with the mysticism that was part of Egyptian culture and the backlash everyone felt after Mark Antony's, Cleopatra's, and Julius Caesar's deaths.  Octavian is manipulative, cruel, and merciless—he wants the Rome he only heard about, a rose-tinted Rome untainted by Cleopatra's influence.  He thinks that if he controls Selene, he will have that; that she will help him be as formidable as Julius Caesar.

Selene was, truthfully, a bit of a brat here.  Until closer to the end, when everything is at stake and she needs to make hard decisions, she does as she pleases with little thought to how it would affect others.  Through time, she becomes more generous and caring, thoughtful of others and ways to stop Octavian's cruelty, but she's almost unbearable at first. 

The added layer of magic is well ingrained with the story, but feels a bit unneeded.  When I began reading the book, I wasn't expecting it and was thus taken back by the sudden 'writings of Isis' that appeared on Selene's body at one point.  Dray gives Selene an almost otherworldly power at times, which felt out of place with the historical fiction.

Most disappointing to me was Dray's almost neglect of Selene's brother, Alexander (never mind the younger one; he's in it briefly and forgotten almost as quickly).  As this was told from Selene's POV, and by the time the ending rolls around Selene has other fish to fry (so to speak), he's lost in the ending theatrics and scheming.  As there is another book, SONG OF THE NILE, I sincerely hope we learn more about his fate.

Alexandra Cenni

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