Napoleon's Pyramids

William Dietrich

2/27/2007

The whole adventure started because Ethan Gage had a good night at the card table. He is an American in his thirties, has fought on the American frontier, has trapped, has traveled, was an aide to Benjamin Franklin, and has learned about electricity, although hasn't found a practical way to use it. He is back in France without Franklin but with his tomahawk, his long rifle, and his wanderlust.

The evening of card play in 1798 Paris has been good to him - he doesn't seem to lose. Finally, a soldier wagers a gold medallion that supposedly came from ancient Egypt with a colorful history. Gage wins that, too. Then he refuses to sell it to a Count who was also at the table who lost the hand. He spends the night with a prostitute, then returns to find his apartment has been ransacked. He returns to the woman's house and finds her dead. Some French soldiers come arrest him for her murder. He runs instead. In order to escape arrest, he instead joins General Napoleon and his troops as they depart to "liberate" Egypt from the Ottomans. Gage is to be part of the group of savants (scientific learned men) who are along to study and solve the ancient Egyptian secrets.

The medallion seems to be cursed. After he leaves Paris, Gage is still pursued. On the road the coach is stopped by robbers. The medallion is not found and Gage escapes. With the French army he often feels uneasy, as if he is in danger, whether he is around his journalist companion, with the other savants, or in with Napoleon and the officers. When a sniper in Alexandria barely misses Napoleon, Gage kills the sniper and gains a woman - slave? priestess? servant? female warrior? Meanwhile, Napoleon and the savants are expecting him to solve the scientific riddle of the medallion and its secrets by the time they reach the pyramids. This American is caught up in something he doesn't understand and isn't sure he can survive.

William Dietrich has taken a documented historical event, populated it with real people, and added an unlikely hero in his rich novel, Napoleon's Pyramids. Dietrich uses the lure of early modern Western knowledge of Egypt, a charismatic leader, and well known figures to pull the reader in. (Alexandre Dumas wasn't born until 1802 and later was in the military in the Revolution, but Dietrich has played with history and here he is a general in Napoleon's army.) He has added the mystique of the area and the ancient history of many cultures that is intertwined in the Egypt.

The book is a steady read - not quick paced, nor does it drag. I kept having to stop and check historical references and facts because of the way they are presented. I knew Napoleon had been to Egypt, but didn't know more than that. To the generally education American, Napoleon was the eccentric ruler of France who finally lost to Wellington at Waterloo and died on the island of Elba. But this novel takes place after he has made his mark on France but before he takes power. We are given a picture of the driven, charismatic man who could be cruel or kind depending on his whimsey of the moment.

Napoleon's Pyramids is a combination of mathematic, magic, and religious history/mystery as well. It combines the spiritual, supernatural, and scientific together in the quest for the secret of the Great Pyramid with the medallion Gage has as the key. It's told in first person narrative, so the reader knows from the onset that Gage survives. The use of an individualist, early American observing and working with Eurpoeans and their existing cultures is an interesting choice. It gives the novel a different perspective.

If you're looking for something for a lazy afternoon escape read, this isn't the book for your mood. But if you're looking for something historically based that will make you think and wonder and learn, you won't go wrong with Napoleon's Pyramids.

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Provided for review