Ismeni: A Prelude to The Legend of Sheba by Tosca Lee

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆

Obtained from: Personal Kindle Library

Read:  August 27, 2014

A mysterious beauty, a destiny set in the stars. Born under an inauspicious sign, young Ismeni is feared by her own people. The single thing she prays for: to live an invisible life. But that is not to be for the young woman who has captured the attention of the king's youngest son. A story of love, passion, and twists of fate through the eyes of the woman who will one day give birth to the legendary Queen of Sheba.

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Why am I only now discovering Tosca Lee? It's a short, but Ismeni: A Prelude to The Legend of Sheba is absolutely fabulous and I can't for the life of me understand how I've not encountered this author before. 

The situational drama is believable despite the brevity of the piece and I couldn't help falling in love with Lee's heroine. I admit the plot leans toward the predictable, but the style and language in which it is written is flawlessly addictive. 

I'm not usually one to promote promotional freebies, but in this case I'm willing to make an exception. Ismeni is a delightful diversionary read that left me dying to get my hands on The Legend of Sheba: Rise of a Queen.

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My mother argued my innocence against the tribal elders, who, I am told, craned to peer at my face even as she tried to shield it with her hands so they might not call such loveliness in a child unnatural . But men are easily swayed by fear. And so I grew up with the burden of a beauty that cannot be celebrated because of its potential, at any moment, to kill.

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In the Field of Grace by Tessa Afshar

Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆
Obtained from: Netgalley
Read: June 12, 2014

Two women. Alone. With no provision. Can a woman who has lost everything, except her beloved mother, find hope in a foreign land? Ruth leaves her home with  a barren womb and an empty future, after losing her husband. She forsakes her abusive parents and follows the woman she has grown to love as a true parent, her husband's mother, Naomi. Ruth arrives in Israel with nothing to recommend her but Naomi's, love. She is destitute, grief-stricken, and unwanted by the people of God. Her loftiest hope is to provide enough food to save Naomi and herself from starvation. She is reduced to gathering leftovers once the harvesters have finished collecting grain from the field. A job only for the lowest of the low. But God has other plans for her life. While everyone considers Ruth an unworthy outsider, Ruth is shocked to find the owner of the field-one of the wealthiest and most honored men of Judah-is showing her favor.  Long since a widower and determined to stay that way, Boaz finds himself irresistibly drawn to the foreign woman with the dark, haunted eyes. He tells himself he is only being kind to his Cousin Naomi's chosen daughter when he goes out of his way to protect her from harm, but his heart knows better. Obstacles. Heartache. Withered dreams. How can God forge love, passion, and new hope between two such different people?

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In February 2013 I reviewed The Sinners and the Sea: The Untold Story of Noah's Wife by Rebecca Kanner and came out as self-admitted cover slut. I'd love to say things have changed, that I've matured into a more discerning individual, but no, good cover art still makes me weak in the knees. I get lightheaded, all rational thought goes out the window and I just can't help myself. Okay, not really. 

Don't misunderstand, DogEared Design, LLC is primarily responsible for my interest Tessa Afshar's In the Field of Grace, but I did actually look at the book's content before picking up the title. I'm not a huge fan of biblical fiction, I'm not even all that religious, but I am familiar with Ruth's story and felt it had potential in terms of a fictional narrative and looking back, I honestly wish I'd been able to appreciate the story more than I did. 

Afshar is a decent writer, but her style is far too preachy for my particular tastes. Take that as you will, publicly chastise me if it will make you feel better, but it wont change my opinion. Again, this has nothing to do with faith or some pre-existing prejudice, I just don't like when an author's tone eclipses their setting, characters, and/or plot. 

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“I could not imagine a better way to be remembered. I hope our descendants will understand that without the stones, there can be no oil. I pray they will learn fortitude and faith when they look at these trees you dream of planting.”

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Claudia, Wife of Pontius Pilate by Diana Wallis Taylor

Rating: ★ ★ ☆ ☆ ☆

Obtained from: Netgalley

Read: September 6, 2013

Claudia's life did not start easily. The illegitimate daughter of Julia, reviled and exiled daughter of Caesar Augustus, Claudia spends her childhood in a guarded villa with her mother and grandmother. When Tiberius, who hates Julia, takes the throne, Claudia is wrenched away from her mother to be brought up in the palace in Rome. The young woman is adrift-until she meets Lucius Pontius Pilate and becomes his wife. When Pilate is appointed Prefect of the troublesome territory of Judea, Claudia does what she has always done: she makes the best of it. But unrest is brewing on the outskirts of the Roman Empire, and Claudia will soon find herself and her beloved husband embroiled in controversy and rebellion. Might she find peace and rest in the teaching of the mysterious Jewish Rabbi everyone seems to be talking about? Readers will be whisked through marbled palaces, dusty marketplaces, and idyllic Italian villas as they follow the unlikely path of a woman who warrants only a passing mention in one of the Gospel accounts. Diana Wallis Taylor combines her impeccable research with her flair for drama and romance to craft a tale worthy of legend.

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Engraving, Claudia's Dream

I think I might have liked Diana Wallis Taylor's Claudia, Wife of Pontius Pilate if I favored Christian theme over historic detail, but at the end of the day I'm just not that kind of reader.

When I picked up this piece, I wanted to be transported into this time and place, to explore the intense conflict of human emotions that might have characterized this chapter of this woman's life, to see this particular story from a nontraditional point of view, but sadly, not one of these desires was fulfilled during my reading of Taylor's work.

Beginning to end I felt the author held back, never giving me enough detail to really picture Claudia's Jerusalem. The city is a dull and lifeless backdrop, the narrative never allowing the reader a real understanding of the city's complex energy and rhythms.

More disappointing though was the bland personality and passive nature of the story's heroine. Claudia perpetually goes through the motions, riding the waves rather than taking control and paddling in any given direction. She falls into her marriage as she falls into her faith and forgive me my opinion, but neither portrayal left me particularly convinced of her sincere devotion to either.

Perhaps I've been spoiled by the authentic portrayal of human emotion in Rebecca Kanner's Sinners and the Sea or the multifaceted world inhabited by Orson Card Card's Women of Genesis, but Taylor's work left me bored and uninspired. 

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"You are of royal blood, the granddaughter of an emperor. You must learn early in life to endure what comes your way. We, as women, have no other choice."

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The Sinners and the Sea: The Untold Story of Noah's Wife by Rebecca Kanner

Rating: ★ ★ ★ ☆ ☆

Obtained from: Netgalley

Read: February 10, 2013

Cursed with a birthmark that many think is the brand of a demon, the young heroine in The Sinners and the Sea is deprived even of a name for fear that it would make it easier for people to spread lies about her. But this virtuous woman has the perfect voice to make one of the Old Testament’s stories live anew. Desperate to keep her safe, the woman’s father gives her to the righteous Noah, who weds her and takes her to the town of Sorum, a land of outcasts. Noah, a 600-year-old paragon of virtue, rises to the role of preacher to a town full of sinners. Alone in her new life, Noah’s wife gives him three sons, but is faced with the hardship of living with an aloof husband who speaks more to God than with her. She tries to make friends with the violent and dissolute people of Sorum while raising a brood that, despite a pious upbringing, have developed some sinful tendencies of their own. But her trials are nothing compared to what awaits her after God tells her husband that a flood is coming—and that Noah and his family must build an ark so that they alone can repopulate the world.

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I'm going to come straight out and admit it. I picked up Rebecca Kanner's The Sinners and the Sea because I think the cover is absolutely gorgeous. I know, I'm horrible. Look up cover slut in the dictionary and you will find my picture. By rights I should be ashamed of myself, but you know what? I'm not. I'll grant my motivations were superficial, but had I not succumbed to them, I wouldn't have discovered this very original take on one of the most well known bible stories.

Kanner's work is unique on many levels. For one thing Noah's wife is not a prominent female in the Bible. Unlike Margaret George or Ginger Garret who have written about Mary Magdalene, Queen Esther, Delilah and Queen Jezebel, Kanner couldn't rely on a the celebrity of a name to draw in her readers. Kanner had to lay a lot more groundwork than the majority of her peers, but I think it also gave her more freedom as a writer, allowing her to move in directions her readers do not expect.  

Also of note are Kanner's cast of characters. When reading Christian literature, I usually find authors who utilize one untarnished character to teach another the Lord's path, but there are no sugary sweet believers to be found among these pages, no one individual who is the embodiment of perfection. No, Kanner's characters are realistically flawed and all the more endearing for it. 

When I began reading this story, I expected a biblical retelling, but the reality is The Sinners and the Sea is about a family, the relationships between them and the hardships they overcame. While not the easiest book to get into, I found Kanner's unconventional approach quite interesting. 

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I felt like I had been exiled. I was not going to have what I wanted most - an ordinary life. 

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