Review: Year of the Hyenas by Brad Geagley

by Chriss Cornish published: May 25, 2010 No Comments

Y is for Year of the Hyenas

This Book Is About

Thebes is swirling with threats to the Pharaoh, Ramses III, and the city is awash in intrigue, ambition, greed, and crimes of passion. Against this backdrop Semerket, the so-called Clerk of Investigations and Secrets and a detective half-paralyzed by problems of his own, from heavy drinking to tactless behavior toward the great and powerful, is retained by the authorities to investigate the murder of an elderly, insignificant Theban priestess. They fail to inform him, however, that they don’t expect him to solve the case. In fact, they don’t want him to.

My Thoughts On This Book

This was a really exciting book of conspiracy and intrigue in ancient Egypt. I couldn’t put Year of the Hyenas down and spent all day reading it. This is a very well written historical suspense mystery; gritty, exciting, emotion-tugging, and almost noir-ish.

From the book’s description, I’d expected Year of the Hyenas to be narrated in first person. The novel’s narrative voice is third person omniscient, though, and flows smoothly between the various point-of-view characters (sometimes within the same paragraph); I was very impressed.

The dark story has a very human characters and a richly realistic setting. I minored in Cultural Anthropology in college and one of my three cultures of focus was Ancient Egypt, but even if I’d never even heard of the place I’d still be saying that the ancient Egyptian setting for this novel is very real feeling and authentic.

Now, most books written in historical settings approach those past people’s beliefs with our modern rationality; gods are just names the characters say and charms are just things they wore and both are only in the novel because the author read about them while researching. What Brad Geagley does with Year of the Hyenas, that I really love, is make magic and the gods real in his setting. This doesn’t make it a fantasy book; I’m not talking about Toth strolling down the boulevard or wizened magicians hurling glittering bolts of ether from their finger tips.

Ancient Egyptians really believed in amulets and the influence of their gods and these things were a central factor in their lives. So the author makes these things not mere set dressing but subtly acting factors that move the edges of the plot. It’s very unique and enhances the sinister excitement in the book.

I also like that, even up until the last handful of pages, that the reader is on tenterhooks about whether the good guys would accomplish anything let alone win. Year of the Hyenas is great suspense.