He Shall Thunder in the Sky

You’ve got your romance. You’ve got your archaeology. You’ve got your mystery and myth. You’ve even got your basic world war. And most of all you’ve got your great Elizabeth Peters gift for gab.

Translate While America is on the brink of war in 1914-1915, Amelia Peabody and her husband are working merrily away at their Egyptian archeological site, pressed into acknowledging the war only because of their son’s machinations. Ramses not only has time for political brinksmanship — he also has time to finally do something about his love life (i.e., Nefret).

This is all well and good. Nobody ever accused Elizabeth Peters of constructing a faulty or dull plot. But what you read her for is the writing. God blessed her with that rarest of gifts, charm, and it can be found in virtually every line. Her tongue is sardonic but rarely tart; amiable but never silly; satiric but never mean. She sees us for what we are, I think, and forgives us nonetheless. And she manages to do all this with a storyline that H. Rider Haggard would have envied for complexity, and G. K. Chesterton for social pith.

If you like stories about Egypt; if you like spunky romance; if you like the derring-do of turn-of-the-century espionage; and most important of all, if you like to laugh a lot, HE SHALL THUNDER IN THE SKY is the book for you.

This is certainly one of the two or three best Amelia Peabody’s I’ve read; maybe the best.

–Ed Gorman