Guardian of the Horizon, by Elizabeth Peters

(0066214718)

The latest, just out this month, in the Amelia Peabody series.

Where to start...if you haven't read this series this explanation will probably make no sense. I'll do my best. The Editor has "discovered" some lost papers that cover the years between about 1906 and just before WWI. These papers detail the Emersons return to The Lost Oasis ten years after their departure with Nefret. They are invited to return because of alleged illness in the royal family. Of course, that turns out to be a ruse; the usurper-king really needs Nefret back to bring stability to the kingdom. Which, of course, the Emersons are not going to be giving freely, since they back the true king, who was overthrown and is leading a slave revolt. There are many more Englishmen who have discovered the Oasis, and the end of their thousand-year-old seclusion is clearly present.

So, Ramses is 20, Nefret is 23, and the elder Emersons are in their mid-fifties (which means in the previous book, published last year, Ramses was 30+, Nefret was mid-thirties, and their parents are........holy cow! Almost 70!). Ramses is much less stolid in his parts of the narrative, as befits his age. But it is disconcerting to see him getting all hormonal about all the lovely women, not excluding Nefret of course.

I love this series. I love Elizabeth Peters; anything she writes. Except I didn't like this book. I turned against it from the start, for a couple of reasons: lots more swearing than I remember in other books (usually very Victorian in their used of "confounded" etc., the Emersons, all of 'em, swear up a storm here), and seemingly less explication, and more dialogue. The plot just seemed much looser than the norm. Maybe The Editor didn't have the usual depth and quality of notes with which to work...?