Review: A Thriller Set During the Arab Spring Could Have Dug Deeper
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 01 20, 2014
I give this book 3.5 stars.The Egyptian uprising that unseated Hosni Mubarek in 2011 is a topic that is both complicated and relevant.  By setting his fictional story, Egypt Rising, during this conflict, Stan Schatt has provided an entry point for young adults in the United States to learn about this important event in recent history.In Egypt Rising, Olivia is a teenager living in Cairo with her archaeologist father.  Although she struggles to fit in at her international high school, she enjoys studying hieroglyphics with her father and spending time with her Egyptian best friend.  Her relatively placid life is disrupted by the 2011 rebellion, which forces her to go into hiding with her classmate and sometime enemy, Taylor, at one of Olivia's father's dig sites.  What follows is part sci-fi adventure, part thriller, and part teenage angst drama.The best parts of the book were actually the one that were most unbelievable.  I enjoyed the descriptions of the teenagers' journey through hidden caves in search of long lost Egyptian artifacts.  As far as I know, the theories put forth in this book, namely that Atlantis was a real place that tied in with ancient Egypt, are purely fictional, but they made for fun reading.  Also, the blending of the real events of the Egyptian uprising with the story made the recent conflict seem closer to home.I did not particularly take to any of the characters in this story, and I found the relationships and interactions between characters to be rather flat.  Also, the end of the story seemed rushed, and I believe that the action would have been more believable had it been played out further.I would recommend this book to teens who are interested in Egypt, past and present.  It would be a good jumping-off point for further exploration of topics such as archaeology, the Arab Spring, and Egyptian society and culture.Lisa Runge (The Kindle Book Review)