The Buried Pyramid by Jane LindskoldMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is a thorough, absorbing historical adventure, deeply rooted in the culture and society of the era. The reader gets inside the minds of headstrong Jenny Benet, a young woman raised on the American frontier and with a dim view of English society and all its restrictions; and Neville Hawthorne, a thoroughly British military man who has become obsessed with the mystery of a legendary pharaoh. It is this mystery that brings Neville and his companions to Egypt and a perilous quest ...
Lindskold excels at creating characters that you identify with and enjoy; their foibles make them real. Even the "villains" in this story are people with depth. I loved Stephen, the peculiar young scholar who is brought along to translate. There's even a cat with a personality all her own. (Particularly fitting in a novel of Egyptology ...)
The build-up in this novel is lengthy, with much planning, preparation, warnings, cautions and preludes ... but it all pays off in the end, and when the fantastic element finally arrives, the reader is fully primed for it. That said, I still think this book spends a bit too much time digressing into the research / background, adds maybe a hurdle or two too many, and could probably have been 50 - 100 pages shorter without losing this tension.
All in all, though, I really enjoyed this book and would love to experience further adventures from this cast.
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