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Summary
Summary
"A frothy, swashbuckling tale of high adventure....Escapist fiction at its ultimate."
--Seattle Times
"It has a plot as satisfying as an Indiana Jones film and offers enough historical knowledge to render the reader a fascinating raconteur on the topics of ancient Egypt and Napoleon Bonaparte."
--USA Today
A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, author William Dietrich introduces readers to the globe-trotting American adventurer Ethan Gage in Napoleon's Pyramids--an ingenious, swashbuckling yarn whose action-packed pages nearly turn themselves. The first book in Dietrich's fabulously fun New York Times bestselling series, Napoleon's Pyramids follows the irrepressible Gage--a brother in spirit to George MacDonald Fraser's Flashman--as he travels with Napoleon's expedition across the burning Egyptian desert in an attempt to solve a 6,000 year old riddle with the help of a mysterious medallion. Here is superior adventure fiction in the spirit of Jack London, Robert Lewis Stevenson, and H. Rider Haggard, and fans of their acclaimed successors--James Rollins, David Liss, Steve Berry, Kate Mosse--will certainly want to get to know Ethan Gage.
Author Notes
William Dietrich lives in Anacortes, Washington.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (5)
School Library Journal Review
Adult/High School-"What if people didn't have to die-? For an individual-that would make him master of all other men. For armies, it would mean indestructibility." Dietrich takes an actual event, Napoleon's 1798 invasion of Egypt; creates an amiable protagonist in the person of American gambler/adventurer Ethan Gage; hatches a plot focused on the enduring mystery of the Egyptian pyramids; and scores with a kinetic tale that expertly combines entertainment with intelligence. Augmenting his poor pay with his luck at cards, Gage acquires an ancient gold medallion one Parisian evening. Intrigued by its indecipherable etchings, perforations, and "two long arms," and suspicious of the interest expressed by Count Silano, a French-Italian aristocrat rumored to participate in the black arts, Gage keeps the artifact. This act unwittingly sets him on a perilous quest from Paris to the Egyptian desert, encountering Gypsies, Freemasons, spies, assassins, Bonaparte, land and sea battles, treachery, and love along the way. The final climactic scene within the Grand Pyramid of Giza is not to be missed, and the ending promises that Gage's adventures will continue. The Da Vinci Code comparisons may seem automatic, but similarities go only as far as seeking the solution to a historical puzzle. Dietrich's work is more cerebral while sacrificing neither suspense nor action; think Indiana Jones meets the Discovery Channel. Fans of historical fiction, action adventure, and thrillers will clamor for this one.-Dori DeSpain, Fairfax County Public Library, VA (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Dietrich's superb historical thriller, his swashbuckling hero, American Ethan Gage, who's living in Paris during the waning days of the French Revolution and was once apprenticed to Benjamin Franklin, wins a curious Egyptian medallion in a card game. Soon after, he's set upon by thieves, chased by the police, attacked by bandits, befriended by Gypsies, saved by a British spy and then packed off to join Napoleon's army as it embarks on its ill-fated Egyptian campaign. There the story really heats up. Once in Egypt, Gage finds himself beset by evildoers bent on stealing the mysterious medallion. As in previous novels like Hadrian's Wall and Scourge of God, Dietrich combines a likable hero surrounded by a cast of fascinating historical characters. Riveting battle scenes, scantily clad women, mathematical puzzles, mysteries of the pharaohs, reckless heroism, hairsbreadth escapes and undaunted courage add up to unbeatable adventure rivaling the exploits of George Macdonald Fraser's Harry Flashman. Readers will cheer as the indomitable Gage floats off in a runaway hot-air balloon, hard on the trail of his next exotic undertaking. Author tour. (Feb.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
Forget the mummies--there's a really big-time secret under wraps in Egypt's pyramids. And whatever it is, Napoleon wants to unravel it. Actually, everybody does, but American ex-pat Ethan Gage has the best shot. Ethan's got the MacGuffin (in this case, a centuries-old gold medallion associated with the pyramids), which he won at cards. The year is 1798, the scene Paris, a place of revelry, licentiousness and maybe a little post-guillotine angst. Young Ethan is at loose--an apt word--ends, having completed service as a sort of right-hand man to Ben Franklin, gone home now to take his place among the Founding Fathers. Suddenly, thanks to his prize, the heretofore aimless if amiable Ethan is imbued with renewed energy, committed to a mission that will change his life. He must beat a path to the pyramids, tracking the medallion in the hope of unlocking secrets that will enable him to understand: (1) what it is that makes it so fatally irresistible (2) why so many insist that the answer lies in the realm of the mystical--that whoever breaks its code achieves a unique and awesome power as the result. Certainly, Napoleon is a believer, a fact that paves the way for Ethan to be on hand when the ferocious Corsican invades Egypt. As it happens, he is also on hand when the ferocious Corsican confronts Lord Nelson, a plot development that will give some readers pause. In the end--after a quest full of fierce fights, narrow escapes, betrayals by friends and enemies, a love gained and lost--the medallion's message turns out to be . . . Sphinx-like. Dietrich (The Scourge of God, 2005, etc.) is never less than authoritative, but when a storyteller's setting is more interesting than his characters, his novel's in trouble. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
The author of, among other thrillers, Hadrian's Wall 0 (2004) and The Scourge of God0 (2005) 0 akes us back to late-eighteenth-century Paris, where American Ethan Gage comes into possession of an ancient medallion and then, almost immediately, is implicated in a woman's murder. Later, he joins Napoleon's expedition into Egypt, where the Great Pyramids could provide the French dictator with the secrets of world conquest or spell certain disaster--for Napoleon and the rest of humanity. Rich in period detail and ancient mythology, this epic-scale thriller succeeds on the strength of its small moments: a conversation that illuminates the plot, a description that captures our imagination. It's of interest, too, to see Napoleon reimagined as an adventurer, a dreamer, and an intellectual. Incorporating some of the well-known speculation about the pyramids (the mathematical significance of the Giza pyramid's design, for example) but not taking it altogether seriously, the novel is a big, exciting romp that will keep high-concept thriller fans on the edge of their seats. --David Pitt Copyright 2007 Booklist
Library Journal Review
Inexplicably accused of murder after winning a mysterious medallion in a card game, expatriate American Ethan Gage is compelled to join Napoleon's expedition to Egypt, where the medallion may help solve the mysteries surrounding the Great Pyramids. With a four-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.