The Woman Who Would Be King Book Review

Title: The Woman Who Would Be King

Author: Kara Cooney

Genre: Biography, Historical, Egypt,

Plot: Hatshepsut has intrigued people for decades and probably will for decades more as researchers work to uncover the veiled mysteries of the past. This great woman of the ancient times rose to power and ruled the greatest kingdom on earth, wielding the might of an empire for years and defying the ancient world's views on women with one great swoop. But she wasn't the first Egyptian daughter to do this and so much of her story will never come to light, lost to the shadows of time and speculation. Such a shame. If time travel existed, the wonders of the past would be available to dazzle us with just how spectacular and horrifying they really were.

Till such a time as time travel comes into existence, we have talented authors and brilliant researchers who attempt to step into the void of the past and peel back, inch by inch, the layers shielding this great historical figures and reveal them more fully to us. And while we may never know what their daily lives were truly like, we can at least know more about the moments that made them great.

Likes/Dislikes: Hatshepsut is one of those Egyptian figures that hovers at the edges of my personal scope of interest, ranking above Cleopatra {whom I have very little interest in studying at all} and below Nefertiti {whom I'm always interested in studying}. The fact that a woman rose to rule Egypt will always intrigue every woman in the modern times, but what I really want to know is lost to the vastness of time. What was she really like? What did she think of all the events that put her on the throne? What was her education like? What made her strong enough to take the reins of an empire? And more importantly, who was the ruling queen before her who dared to ascend the throne? We know for a historical fact that Hatshepsut wasn’t the first or the last woman to rule Egypt, just the most famous. So who was the first and what was her story? And while this book attempts to paint more of Hatshepsut's picture, it does nothing for the former queen to set the trend and little for the daily life of the heroine. Still, an excellent attempt and wonderfully written, which is hard to do with a biography of an ancient person.

Rating: PG-15 and up, mainly for reading level and some frank talk about intimate historical situations. Anyone who's studied Egypt knows just how open they were about everything.

Date Review Written: June 21st, 2016.

I received a free copy of this book courtesy of Blogging for Books in exchange for an honest review. I wasn’t required to write a positive review and the opinions expressed in the above review are my own.