Ambassador's Daughter: A Novel of Ancient Mesopotamia

by Elisabeth Roberts Craft

1380 B.C. In the streets of Wassukkanni, the capital of Mitanni, a beautiful slave lies dead. She belonged to Arttarna, Mitanni's roving ambassador, and this slave and her master shared a a five-year-old daughter. Little Kelu is brought to Arttarna, who soon becomes deeply attached to her. To hide Kelu from his jealous wife, he asks the king to let the girl become an attendant to Princess Tadukhepa. Living in the palace, Kelu spends every day playing with the princess and the two princes, Mattiwaza and Shaushtater. The children become fast friends as Kelu adapts to her new life of luxury. But her secret lineage keeps her in constant peril. When twelve-year-old Princess Tadukhepa is sent to Egypt to become one of the pharaoh's wives, Kelu moves to her Uncle Arttarna's home. Then one day the king discovers that Prince Mattiwaza has become infatuated with Kelu, who is fast blossoming into a lovely teenager. The king orders Arttarna to take up ambassadorial duties in Hattusas, the Hittite capital, and to take his daughter with him. Rumors of an Assyrian invasion of Mitanni have already begun to alarm Ambassador Arttarna, and he takes the opportunity to investigate first-hand

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

272 pages, Hardcover

First published February 28, 2007

Reviews

[Iset]

I probably should have known better than to pick this book up after the poorly written In the Court of the Queen, by the same author, but I rarely blacklist an author based on one bad book – two bad books, on the other hand, is a clear signal to me that it’s not my thing – and I will say one thing for the late Elizabeth Roberts Craft: she clearly had a passion for the overlooked and lesser-known cultures of the ancient world. It was because of that passion that I picked this book up – have you ever tried to find a novel about ancient Mitanni before? Compared to better known societies like the Assyrians, Babylonians, and Egyptians, the Mitanni are a great mystery, and yet they were one of the foremost empires of the Bronze Age. I felt I had to at least give this book a go.

Unfortunately, despite her clear enthusiasm, it seems that the author badly lacked skill at story-telling. To write a historical novel doesn’t just require interest in the subject and research – you still have to be able to wield a quality penmanship and have an intimate understanding of what makes a good story and what makes a bad story. Across both the two books of Craft’s that I have read, they suffered from the same problems. First is a seeming compulsion to infodump. Craft wants to squeeze in every interesting fact she researched about the ancient world, and whilst I empathise with the sentiment – hey, I am a historian after all – she just plops it down wherever, with no relevance to the plot. A successful historical novelist probably ends up doing far more research than they ever put in their novel, and it can be tempting to not want to let it go to waste, but a good writer has to rein in that instinct and focus on plot quality first.

Craft’s second problem is the way she writes characters. Again, in both books, they’ve felt very flat and one-dimensional. They pretty much have one defining quality and one very obvious motivation, and nothing more to them. They have no interests beyond the one thing that defines their character, no secrets, no contradictions, no complexities. They don’t feel like real human beings. Dialogue, as a result, is very insipid and pedestrian, and the style of writing as a whole comes off as if a ten-year-old wrote it. By that I mean the story is largely just a sequence of events happening with little connection between them, random twists that pop up out of the blue crackfic style, the characters don’t grow or have an arc, and the story is stuffed full of very old and well-worn tropes such as damsel-in-distress and barren-wife-is-cackling-villain-stepmother.

This is why I bow out of this one. I just can’t read any more books by Elizabeth Roberts Craft.

2 out of 10

[Alex]

The Ambassador’s Daughter is a historical fiction novel which is set in 1380 BC in the area of the Mittanian Empire. The two most main characters in the story are Ambassador Arttarna and his daughter Kelu. We encounter Kelu in the first chapter as a five year old when her mother has just died in a horse-drawn carriage accident. We find Kelu in a state of shock and is being taken home by a man who later becomes known as Rasi. Once she is home her guardian, Pamba, has to come up of a way of where can little Kelu go. The story moves on to where Kelu grows and starts dealing with problems a princess normally would such as marriage. In case you haven’t noticed Kelu is the developing character in the story. One thing I like about Elizabeth’s writing is she keeps it simple but information and all of the information given from her tells a lot about the Mittanian society. For example, “With bowed head, he prayed aloud to Teshub, the storm god, and to Arinna, the sun goddess, asking them to grant his army victory in the spring campaign, and keep his troops safe.” One complaint about the book is that the book doesn’t give any detail about the background of the author it only shows a picture of her at what looks like an archeological site. Overall the book was detailed and concise also informative. To conclude, if I were to recommend this book to someone I would.