MY STORY: Ancient Egypt

My Story is the UK's version of Dear America. The main differences, aside from the obvious, are that both the girl and boy books are in one series and that some of the books are in diary form and some are more typical chapters. There does seem to be a My Royal Story division, but that only comes with the later additions. Also, there is some overlap with Dear America and the Royal Diaries. My Story includes some of the books written for DA and Royal Diaries.

There are a lot of these books with multiple cover styles. This one to the left is one of the newer ones. I prefer the look of the older covers myself, but it won't be until the 6th book that I can point that out with an accompanying photo. The five oldest books going in historical order all have the newer white covers.

Pyramid of Secrets is about an Egyptian orphan boy who lived during the building of the pyramids of Giza. Khufu's is finished and he's deceased, but the boy and his uncle are working on Khafre's. The boy's father was killed in an accident while building the pyramids, so he bears a grudge against the entire process, which makes him an easy target to be used by some prisoners also in the working camps.

This book was well-written and seemingly well-researched. I don't remember any glaring errors. It gives a nice idea of what it was like during these building projects and like Maia's book from my previous review, you get a glimpse of Ancient Egyptian daily life for non-royals.

Princess of Egypt, despite the rather boring cover line, is the diary of Hatshepsut when she was about 14. This is not just any Egyptian girl. I haven't read this in years, but it annoys me just as much as I remember.

You see, the author uses a lot of British slang and modern phrasings that pull you into today and don't leave you steeped in ancient Egypt. "Mum" was used and I swear "chap" was in there. And she actually counted "Eeny meeny miny mo" and said "puh-lease." Hatshepsut also goes by the nickname Asha, which there is absolutely no record of and I think dumbs down her character even more than the language of the book already does. And Thutmose II is portrayed as a complete drunken idiot, which does him disservice.

This one really is not worth reading. The plot is your stereotypical evil vizier fare and it really does not teach anything about Egypt other books don't handle better. It's sad that Hatshepsut's one entry into all these historical fiction series I read is complete shit.