Queen of Kings

I picked up Maria Dahvana Headley's Queen of Kings (#136) at the library, expecting an interesting historical account of Cleopatra's life; after all, it does have the subtitle: The Immortal Story of Cleopatra.  I didn't bother to read the cover flap before I added it to my pile of books.  I was surprised on reading it as my husband drove home that this novel was something different, and I was even more intrigued when I saw a video trailer for Queen of Kings on the Good Reads blog site.   Good Reads blogsite.

In Ms. Headley's novel, the action begins when Octavian's troops surround Alexandria.  Cleopatra awaits her beloved Mark Antony in the tomb where she intends to perform a rite invoking the ancient Egyptian goddess Sekhmet in order to gain immortality for herself and Mark Antony.  But things don't go as planned.   Instead of committing suicide with an asp, she does perform an immortality ritual missing some vital elements of the spell from the scroll containing it.  Cleopatra is bound to Sekhmet, but without the protections for her own soul, or ka.  Sekhmet demands blood, and a chain of events is set in motion that could mean the end of the world if Augustus does not take steps to prevent the destruction Cleopatra causes as she fights to preserve Antony and her children.

This book was an intriguing take on the relationship between Cleopatra and Julius Caesar, Mark Antony, and Octavian, Caesar's great nephew and heir.  The interplay between the main characters and their beliefs  in the gods of ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome and Norse mythology seem a natural outcome in the wonderfully chilling pictured paranormal events described here.  This is way more than your average vampire novel, even though there are some aspects of that.  If your reading of historical fiction does not demand a narrow following of the known historical sources, you will find this "what if" imagining of an alternative ending to Cleopatra's story a real page turner.  Dark, but vivid, and a highly recommended read.