***Includes Spoilers***
Well, first off, I read WAY too many scholarly historical books because my brain would say "made that up", "took this from a newspaper", "took this from a diary", "made THAT up", "wait, is there evidence for that?!? because if so, that's awesome!", etc. So, there's my complaint on this being a little too much on the fiction side of non-fiction.
For the rest, I'm highly disappointed by the ending. I think his conclusion chapter was a total cop-out. Patterson gives no hard evidence to support that the wife was in on the conspiracy. The other two were obviously in on it, and fine, I'll take the cop-out there, but this is where his lack of scholarship (not that he didn't do the research, but through the flawed way he that he presented his research) comes into play. I wish that he'd gone into more detail about how he came about his conclusions. The chapter on finding the wife's ring is great because it answers the question of how he concluded that she'd been fed to the crocodiles. But how about a chapter like this on how he decided what conversations were held between the conspirators. How does he know that the queen's hand maiden was a spy? How does he know that it was a hired hit man that killed Tut? Does Patterson just assume that anyone reading this book has read other books that go into these details?!? If so, that's being stupid on his part.
I would rate this a 5/5 if it had been more scholarly, but as he was more interested in telling a certain story than to explain why he believed himself correct, a star is lost
Well, first off, I read WAY too many scholarly historical books because my brain would say "made that up", "took this from a newspaper", "took this from a diary", "made THAT up", "wait, is there evidence for that?!? because if so, that's awesome!", etc. So, there's my complaint on this being a little too much on the fiction side of non-fiction.
For the rest, I'm highly disappointed by the ending. I think his conclusion chapter was a total cop-out. Patterson gives no hard evidence to support that the wife was in on the conspiracy. The other two were obviously in on it, and fine, I'll take the cop-out there, but this is where his lack of scholarship (not that he didn't do the research, but through the flawed way he that he presented his research) comes into play. I wish that he'd gone into more detail about how he came about his conclusions. The chapter on finding the wife's ring is great because it answers the question of how he concluded that she'd been fed to the crocodiles. But how about a chapter like this on how he decided what conversations were held between the conspirators. How does he know that the queen's hand maiden was a spy? How does he know that it was a hired hit man that killed Tut? Does Patterson just assume that anyone reading this book has read other books that go into these details?!? If so, that's being stupid on his part.
I would rate this a 5/5 if it had been more scholarly, but as he was more interested in telling a certain story than to explain why he believed himself correct, a star is lost
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