Review: Excruciating in parts
Rating: 3 out of 5
Date: 03 20, 2014
I like the way this author writes and have read nearly all of her books. This one is not a favourite. I loved that the setting was so different and the story was unique. The h was an Egyptian orphan artist that the H finds on the streets, practically starving and disguised as a boy. He takes her off on a journey across the desert and she is supposed to be an artist. He also wants her to playact as his mistress.  She is a very beautiful woman and it is obvious that she is half-Egyptian and half-European, as her colouring is fair and she has blue eyes. She has been told that she is the illegitimate child of a prostitute by a priest in the orphanage where she was brought up. She escaped the orphanage after the priest tried to molest her.This is a long saga in several parts with lots of different settings. As one of the other reviewers said, the desert part of the story was very tedious and I didn't think it would ever be over. The H was on a mission for the British government and dragged the h through all of his escapades. He tries to fight his attraction for her the whole time as he doesn't want to dishonour her. I suppose the author was trying to build the relationship between the main characters so that when they are separated later, we would understand the H's motivation for being desperate to find her. The author definitely could have cut a large part of that out.+++Spoilers+++Once again I'm irritated by the fact that although the h has a huge fear of illegitimacy and goes as far as to tell the H this, she still winds up alone and pregnant. Perhaps because of her origins we are expected to accept this as her due but I really hate this kind of story line. I also truly hate it when the h has the baby before being properly married to the H. The author does a fair job of trying to work it all out but I'm not sure that I loved having the love story at the beginning and then, except for a short reconnection in Venice, the main characters are separated for her entire pregnancy and birth of their child. It all only comes together again in the final 2 chapters.The author writes well and this is a very long and intricate story, I'm just not sure that I loved it.