The Gilded Chamber

by Rebecca Kohn

One girl, one nation, one chance ...Esther's story is one of the most dramatic in the a renowned beauty, she used her feminine wiles to capture the heart of a king and so win the deliverance of her people from the threat of death. "The Gilded Chamber" creatively re-works the famous story to show us how this young girl came to be in the harem of King Xerxes and how her path to womanhood enabled her to save a nation and find peace. This is a tale of strength, seduction and survival, of the solidarity of women, and its descriptions of the Persian palace and the secrets contained within those walls will hold you spellbound to the final page.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction, Historical, Biblical Fiction, Jewish, Biblical, Religion

368 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 2004

Reviews

[Marissa · Rating 1 out of 5]

I was really looking foreword to reading this book, Because it's about one of my favorite subjects (Queen Esther).
But I ended up reading only 2 or 3 pages and closed the book,
because I couldn't believe how graphic (sexual) it was...and I'm sorry but I was Disgusted by it.

Now I know and love the story of Queen Esther very well, so i fond this book very distasteful.

And also it's NOT a book for all ages.

[Prairie78 · Rating 2 out of 5]

Here's the deal: very minor problems can sour a novel, and this book is filled with minor problems; and unfortunately, some major ones as well. One problem is the author doesn't know how she feels about her characters. It's as though she's developed them haphazardly, with no thought for consistency or cohesion. The relationships between characters are not believable. The behaviors of the characters are not believable. A major problem is that the plot disappears at one point, never really to resurface. The story of Queen Esther is rich and complex, and the author almost seems to use it well, only to completely fail.
There are some serious descriptive problems as well. For example (and I'm embellishing ever so slightly here): "My sorrow flowed from me like a red blood river that filled the coffers of my enemies with its bittersweet fragrance."
No, actually, I take that back, there's no embellishment there at all. The book is filled with similar phrases, and while at first they seem quite lovely and poetic, by the end of the novel, you want to stab your eyes out so that you too might weep a red blood river.

[Nefertari · Rating 5 out of 5]

A. It's not smut.
B. It's a realistic take on the Biblical tale of Queen Esther.
C. It's a good imagining of it, with characters brought to life with different motivations and more fully-realized characters.
D. There's actually not much sex at all. At all. If you can't handle a Bible with harems, slaves, and eunuchs, what version are you reading? Seriously...

[Kris Irvin · Rating 1 out of 5]

I read this book in early 2008, after buying it for a dollar from Borders. I remember being drawn into it at first, but couldn't believe how graphic (sexual) it was. The word that comes to mind is smut. Total smut. Normally after I finish a book I own and didn't like, I donate it. This one, I threw away. It wasn't even good enough to recycle.

[Tifnie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Gilded Chamber is pretty much a verbatim of The Book of Esther in the Old Testament. I pulled out my Bible, read Book of Esther and the author, Rebecca Kohn, used just about all of the text and then wove a tale to fill in the blanks to make her story - albeit something like a soft porn.

So, for those of you who do not know The Book of Esther, err..rather The Gildedd Chamber, here is the story:

When King Xerxes commands his wife to display herself infront of his men in nothing but a turban, she refuses. Now exiled from the King's kingdom for disobeying, the king sets out to find every virgin in his kingdom for his pleasure/harem. Taken from her home at the age of 14, Esther finds herself in the Kings harem where she must undergo 12 months of beauty treatments before being presented to the king.

Fast forward...once Esther has secured the favor of the king, she sets out of free her people, the Jews, from an edict issued by the King to kill all Jews in his kingdom for disobeying his rules.

Unfortunately, our first time author, Rebecca Kohn, spent too much time on Esther's 12 months of beauty treatments, the King's favorites, the outfits that the virgins wear, the eunichs that run the harem, and wine induced pleasures that the real story of Esther freeing her people from slaughter was an afterthought.

Pity.

[Suzanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

“I carried my grace and kindness before the king. He did not know my name, my people, or my descent. He did not care. Desire seized his senses and roused him from the lethargy and indifference. He tasted life again as his old self, the man he was before the loss of Vashti and the defeat in Greece. For this King Xerxes loved me more than all the other women.”

What a gem of a book! I picked this a couple of years of ago at a discount booksellers on a clearance rack. The premise caught my eye: a book of historical fiction based on the life of Queen Esther of biblical fame.

Rebecca Kohn does a marvelous job of transporting the reader to ancient Persia in the court of King Xerxes. The girl, newly named Esther (to hide her Jewish ancestry), is brought into the harem to serve the King. The story of Esther is more than a simple one of a young woman brave enough to answer God’s call to save her people. Kohn presents a well-researched novel to try to explain the complexity of Esther’s situation. The result: an impressive work sure to please historical fiction fans and biblical story enthusiasts like.

[Ana Mardoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Gilded Chamber / 0-14-303533-9

I cannot help but echo the reviewers who compared this to Falconer's "The Sultan's Harem". The similarities are there - a young woman plucked out of her happy, familiar life in order to sexually service a demanding despot, whilst simultaneously fighting tooth-and-nail against the other "fortunate" girls for a favored position in this unfavorable environment. But here is where Falconer shines and Kohn fades: the reaction of the girl in question to her circumstances.

Falconer's Hurrem smolders with hatred and revenge; she hates the sultan who bought her, she hates the women she is forced to compete with, she hates the country that treats her as chattel to be bought and sold. The fact that she *exacts* revenge is secondary to the vital fact that she *desires* revenge. Kohn's Esther, on the other hand, is placid and sugar-sweet, pitying the women who seek to displace her. Esther's position is never in peril because the author does not allow it to be, and it's a shame because it would be nice to see her reaction to someone who actually threatened to supplant her. However, her character hints that she really wouldn't care one way or another, and even goes so far as to fall in love with the tyrant who kidnapped her.

I'm not sure what we are to make of this. Xerxes is shown in the novel as a despot. He is cruel to his women, even going to far as to brutally rape and seriously hurt one of Esther's close friends in the harem. He is a drunken lout, despised by his own courtiers. He denies Esther anything which makes her happy, monitoring her eating habits and demanding that she spend less time with an adopted daughter in order to focus on making a "legitimate" heir. It is understandable that Esther would want to placate this dangerous entity, but there is nothing here to love. We do not despise Esther for her compliance, but we do despise her for her capitulation: for loving this man who brutalizes her and everything she loves *because* it pleases him to be cruel.

I can only guess why Kohn made this authorial decision, but I suspect that the "love angle" was written in to ensure that a certain segment of the target audience wouldn't be offended - there are, I suppose, certain people who would call Esther's integrity into question if she sleeps with a man she doesn't love. For whatever reason, however, I believe that this decision hurt the novel badly. Instead of an interesting tale of Esther's ingenuity in surviving, thriving, and insinuating herself into a place to save her people, we are given a love-lorn woman who regularly laments that the man she loves is just too stupid, cruel, evil, and awful to be the man she deserves. Thus is a very interesting story reduced to just a bland romance novel.

~ Ana Mardoll

[Jamie J · Rating 2 out of 5]

This behind-the-scenes glimpse of an emancipated royal concubine is one undergirded in Orientalist romanticism. It completely reifies the 2-300 yr old Western stereotype of "exotic" harem behavior. I nearly threw-up when the author described homosexual activity within the harem, not because I didn't enjoy the visuals, but because it was SO PREDICTABLE!

I would hesitate to compare "The Guilded Chamber" to "The Red Tent" just because the main character is Jewish woman and the story is told from a female perspective. The writing was simplistic at best and the plot was trite. Esther's excessive musings over her late mother and her estranged cousin-husband and the all-too-obvious foreshadowing ruined the storyline for me. I dreaded reading the book until the last 100 pages or so when a few interesting characters were finally introduced.

If you've read the Red Tent and The Guided Chamber and are interested in other readings about Jewish woman in historically-based yet fanciful settings, may I suggest "Flowers in the Blood" by Guy Couter. It's a fantastic story and is very well written.

[Loraine · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story of Queen Esther was lost especially in the first half among the numerous details of the preparation of the young girls for King Xerxes' bed. It is obvious that Kohn did a lot of historical and Biblical research, but the focus in the first half spoiled what was a much better second half where she focused on Queen Esther's help for the Jews.

[Mira Gail · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I Liked:

~One of the most outstanding characteristics of our heroine is her devotion to her faith. Despite being transported to another land with a completely different religion and culture, Esther was never swayed and kept all her beliefs in her heart. Another remarkable trait is her wit and guts. Being a woman in ancient times is hard and she used her only weapon at hand - her irresistible charm and allure. Through this, she was able to ask favours from the King to help her friends
and ultimately to the people who share her faith.

What I Disliked:

~What I did not enjoy was the ending, it leaves a lot of questions and is open to a lot of possibilities. Of course, I’d like to think that Esther lives happily. (Although it would have been better if it was explicitly stated you know!)

~I would also like to add that there are parts of this book that contains a lot of sexual language when depicting the activities on the harem. I myself did not focus on this since I think it was included to give the readers a better understanding of the harem. So if you are sensitive to sexual languages, consider yourself warned.


Summary:

I’ll give this a 4 out of 5 stars!. Overall I think this is a superb book – very rich in Persian culture and the ways of the harem in ancient times. The sexual content can be disconcerting but I think it adds authenticity to the setting of the story. I love how this book shows how a young girl can use her wit, charm and sincerity in helping other people.

[Joy · Rating 5 out of 5]

A retelling of the biblical story of Esther. It remains very faithful to the biblical text, while adding historic details of the court and King Xerxes. It also adds more dimension to Esther, making me want to know what happened to her after the end of the biblical story.

[Dianne Landry · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story of Queen Esther has always been a personal favourite of mine so I thoroughly enjoyed this book. I also need to add that I read a few reviews who said there was explicit sex in this book and who called it smut. I don't know what book they were reading but we clearly did not read the same one.

[Patty Zuiderwijk · Rating 3 out of 5]

story 3/5
characters 3/5
writing 3/5
audio/paper Read the physical book.
reread? No, but I might pick up another book by this author.

[Haley Starshine ;) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rebecca Kohn hasn't exactly created a masterpiece in The Gilded Chamber, with an unsatisfying climax and a style that seems to strain its first-person capabilities, but she has written a solid work that pretty well taps into an incredibly powerful narrative tradition behind the Bible.

Kohn's prose vacillates between poetry and cringe-inducing -- Esther refers to her sexuality as "her flower," for God's sake, on multiple occasions, and it doesn't matter that this is the kind of modest metaphor Esther would've actually used, it's still jarring and embarrassing enough that Kohn should've at least tried to find a workaround. And it's pretty easy to see how a different kind of reader wouldn't see the poetry there at all, but put it down to purple prose; the seemingly endless descriptions of the extravagance of palace life can, after the nineteenth iteration, feel just a touch repetitive.

There are definitely places, notably the stretches of time between Esther's arrival at the harem and her marriage, and her marriage and her miscarriage, that are hugely underutilized in the book. Kohn mainly fills the time with anecdotes about the major events in Esther's friends' lives, but by skipping over how Esther and her friends pass time in the day-to-day vagaries of palace life, Kohn misses a huge opportunity to make Esther more relatable and likable. What we get instead are a few paragraphs about boredom and depression that, while probably accurate to the lives of harem women in Persia 2500 years ago, don't exactly make for thrilling reading.

But what I think leaves me the most dissatisfied about this book is the way her ultimate triumph -- turning the beauty that has trapped her into a life of decadence and excess into a weapon for the good of her people -- doesn't quite strike the reader as the thrilling triumph of good over evil that it ought to be, that it definitely is in the Biblical Book of Esther. There's no sense of climactic resolution when Esther gets Haman sentenced to death. In fact, it doesn't even seem a result of her actions, as it's made pretty explicit that the official reason is Haman's threats towards Esther's life, not Esther's accusations of Haman. It's a huge letdown. We've been watching Esther spiral downwards into being the simplistic ornamentation women were meant to be at that time, and in the pivotal moment where she summons up the force of her sexuality and becomes a warrior instead of a weapon, she...doesn't manage to do much at all, or at least it's not portrayed that way. Kohn's Esther does some pretty impressive things: she saves her friends, she saves her people, she overcomes the circumstances that have been forced upon her by her beauty. But when she, as the narrator, fails to recognize the importance of what she's done, the reader isn't quite convinced, either, and as a result Esther's entire character arc falls flat on its face.

That's not to say that Kohn's book isn't strong, even stunning, in other areas. The snapshots of life she conjures up of Persia, circa 500 BCE, are overflowing with life -- you can practically feel the historical accuracy dripping off the tiles. And in spite of the way that Esther, one of the Bible's iconic seductresses, is reduced to a vapid girl bordering on the unlikable at times whose greatest success isn't even hers, Kohn has done an incredible job revealing what life was like for the women of the ancient world -- from Freni, freed and charged with backbreaking work to ensure her family's survival, to Puah, aged and trapped into servitude, to Esther herself, The Gilded Chamber is thick with stories of the secret lives of women, and the secret horrors of being a woman in a time when the king's law is absolute and woman are occasionally less than property.

At times -- especially when Kohn taps into a Biblical narrative tradition that calls the repetition of these stories through millennia -- Kohn's writing can be shiveringly lovely. When Esther describes herself as "a blessing to [Puah] in her old age," for example, the almost thoughtless reminder of Abraham and Isaac is a punch to the gut with the weight of cultural history. And The Gilded Chamber's take on the role of the faith in the lives of Mordechai and Esther is surprising and intriguing; for a story ripped from the pages of the Hebrew Bible, it's almost startling to imagine Mordechai as an unobservant Jew, or Esther as a girl who doesn't know a single Hebrew prayer; the transformations of Mordechai and Esther, and the unwavering faith of Puah and Freni, is one character arc that definitely doesn't fall flat.

In summary: worth reading, but definitely wouldn't read again, and would recommend with caution.

[Amy Ariel · Rating 2 out of 5]

This one, among the books of Esther, was decently written. However, it still couldn't help but steep itself in misogyny. After being forced to sexually entertain the king, she - in her own mind - explicitly says she has forgotten that this man caused her father's murder, her own kidnapping, her digital rape in the harem as she was prepared for the king ... forgotten. And why? Because the king is oh, such a man. He has awakened her desire.

Two stars.
One because the writing is engaging.
The other because the descriptions of the palace and world are illustrative and an invitation into this narrative.

If you read it, though, I encourage a critical eye. It lives on a shelf with the idea that it's "romantic" when someone kisses you and you know they want to kill you, or stalks you and watches you sleep. (Yes, Twilight.)

Some reviewers are bothered by the sexual content. Esther was abducted to be made a sex slave for a king. That's in the Megillah, we just tend to gloss over that part when we read the story at Purim. This story should be graphic. Human trafficking, slavery, rape, death in childbirth ... these issues aren't pretty. Or romantic. Esther's night with the king was no Beauty pageant, and having our children parade around their 'beauty' in their princess costumes in celebration of this story should disturb us to no end. The bloodbath at the end of the Megillah is also gruesome. As is the hanging of Haman and the killing of his 10 sons. This story isn't a children's story. It never was. Even though we often make it so.

[ManOfLaBook.com · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is a familiar one, Hadassah, a Jewish orphan, is being brought to the court of King Xerxes as a possible queen. Hiding her Jewish origins she changes her name to Esther, becomes queen and saves the Jews from certain death (now...let's eat).

The book itself is very inventive, I must give the author credit and I really enjoyed the first part of the book. However, for me the book took a wrong turn by not sticking with the biblical timeline and taking too many liberties with the "fiction" part of historical fiction. Part of my enjoyment reading historical fiction is that I learn something along the way, if I have to pick apart what's accurate and what's not it takes away from the experience.

The female characters are drawn very nicely, but the males seemed to be a bit flat and uninteresting. That's too bad because Xerxes, Mordechai and Haman are fascinating cultural, historical and biblical characters by their own right.
This is not a criticism, just an observation.

Another issue is consistency. The king is depicted as a raging drunk in one scene, and as a benevolent monarch in another and from some reason Esther's portrayal changes towards the end of the book. However, these might be just me nitpicking because I really like the Book of Esther.

Overall I liked the book. It was engaging, entertaining and doesn't sugar-coat (too much) the harsh life women had (even royalty).

[Ursula · Rating 3 out of 5]

I was really drawn into this book right away. I didn't know anything about Esther, so I can't really comment on the historical/Biblical accuracy of the story. The plot moves along very quickly in the beginning, with Esther (then called Hadassah) being orphaned in Babylon and going to live with her cousin/husband-to-be Mordechai in Persia. Mordechai, however, is now known as Marduka the Babylonian, an adviser to King Xerxes I.

Before Hadassah can sort out whether or not her cousin still intends to marry her (she's 14 and getting impatient), she's taken by the king's soldiers and sent to the harem to see if she will be a good concubine for the king. She is now known as Esther and fearful of revealing herself to be Jewish. She finds favor with Xerxes and is soon elevated to Queen. She ultimately uses this position to save the Jews of the Persian Empire from a death edict.

Just looking at it as a story, I was hoping that Xerxes would end up having a little more substance to him, or at least a more consistent characterization. But royalty was allowed to be as mercurial as they pleased, so maybe that's based on history. I sped through the first 2/3 of the book, but the last part dragged for me a bit. I was sort of disappointed - I thought Esther would do more, somehow, or change Xerxes for the better, and the last chapter or so seemed unnecessary.

But overall, I enjoyed it and the depiction of a harem/concubine/court setting from a place and era about which I knew nothing.

[Holly · Rating 3 out of 5]

I had a lot of flying time last weekend, so this was a $1 novel that I picked up, intending to discard at my destination.
I didn't discard The Gilded Chamber, but actually carried it back. I enjoy historical fiction -- history leaves me asleep if I don't have a character(s) to experience life through.
Queen Esther once again showed how women have spent much of humankind's time on earth valued only for their beauty and sexuality. It is chilling how a girl really, selected for her virginity and beauty, would still need 12 months of "beauty" treatments to be fit to send to the king's bed. The life of a concubine in the king's harem is mind numbing just to read about -- living it would be difficult.
I'm impressed that Queen Esther used her intelligence, savvy and kind heart to help save the lives of thousands of Jews when they were to be slaughtered.
I've read a few of the reviews, and I agree that the men are pretty one dimensional.
But overall, an illuminating and educational read.

[Chuck · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an historical novel based on the life of Queen Esther on which the Bible's book of Esther is based. Esther is a beautiful young Jewish girl of fourteen when she is abducted, as were many other young virgins, at King Xerxes order to join the king's harem from which a new queen would be chosen. This is the same King Xerxes who sat on a mountain top and watched his Persian army defeat
the 300 Spartans at the Battle of Thermopylae. Esther is chosed to be the new queen and Mrs.Kohn describes vividly the details of her life as queen including Esther's role in saving the Jews in Persia from an edict of genocide. I re-read the Book of Esther after reading the novel and found that with a few additions and clarifications the novel was faithful to the history. I found it to be a thoroughly
enjoyable read.

[Eh?Eh! · Rating 2 out of 5]

The story of Esther is told as if we could see her daily worries, the trials she faced in Xerxes royal sphere...but this removed all the inspiration from the tale. She wasn't especially strong, faithful, beautiful, perhaps she was described as humble as in the Bible. It was depressing and sad. A little too much realism for me while still being unrealistic...if that makes sense.

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book! I couldn't put it down! A fascinating fictional-based-on-fact account of Esther from the bible. It's an awesome description of what life may have been like in ancient Persia, in a harem, in a palance, and outside in the real world. I highly recommend it!

[Ginny Thurston · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought it was interesting historically. I became much more interested in Esther and what happened to her after the book of the Bible was finished. It reminded me of The Red Tent and, it made me happy I was a woman in America...not in the Middle East.

[BAM doesn’t answer to her real name · Rating 3 out of 5]

Kudos to the author for actually sticking to the Book of Esther. Lovely new perspective

[Dainy Bernstein · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing is excellent, and I liked the first few times that I could recognize a direct translation of the Biblical Hebrew.

But I found most of the characters flat - Esther is developed, but the others are left as shadows in the margins of the text. I wanted more about Puah and Mordechai especially. Esther never stops loving Mordechai, but his portrayal in the few times we see him gave me no reason to even like him, let alone understand Esther's enduring love for him. A childish love, yes. After all she's been through? Absolutely not. Make him beg. But then, I also didn't see any indication of what Esther and the text see as his undeniable love for her...

Some of the themes really piqued my interest, and I wanted to see how Kohn would give Esther complexity, but the themes are all raised and not really dealt with. It's made clear towards the beginning that the way women and girls are perceived as "vessels" is not condoned, but as Esther learns to do what she needs to in order to survive, that theme is dropped and by the end, discussion of a young girl's betrothal happens with no reservation.

There's also an excessive amount of dwelling on "manhood" - the eunuchs' lack of "manhood" and King Xerxes' "manhood" - the word itself is a choice, and it's indicative of what disturbed me about this whole book. Other related disturbing details were a random moment when King Xerxes invites a boy to join his sexual encounter with Esther, and Esther recoils in disgust - the text makes it seem like Esther is disgusted by the king's arousal by a male, which comes off as extremely homophobic, just as the dwelling on "manhood" smacks of transphobia. (I am not calling the author homophobic or transphobic, just commenting on the effect of her text.) The constant, nonstop description of Hegei as large, the descriptions of him "heaving his bulk" around, was so fatphobic and off-putting.

The end of the novel is a bit slapdash. The author says she follows the story after the Biblical text and leaves the ending open to possibility, but the huge and abrupt jumps in time between each scene make it feel like we're just hurtling towards a neat resolution instead of actually watching the court intrigue play out.

I enjoyed reading this book mostly as an intellectual exercise, not so much as a novel for itself.

[Eleanor Higginson · Rating 3 out of 5]

I’ve always been fascinated with the Purim story, so I was excited to read a novel promising more insight into the characters, particularly that of Hadassah/ Esther. Kohn has clearly done a lot of research into the period, and richly describes the aesthetics of the palace. I was reminded of Empress Orchid, although The Gilded Chamber is set in a very different time and place.
I enjoyed seeing minor characters in Megillat Esther fleshed out, such as Puah. I also enjoyed the addition of characters like Esther’s friend Freni and adopted daughter Anatana. Esther’s psyche is rendered convincingly and her transformation from a young frightened girl to a heroine was moving. Religion was used effectively within the novel, and it was emphasised how certain characters were motivated by their faith, without the text becoming preachy.
The novel started very strongly, however as it went on I became frustrated about the deviations from the main story. Esther rescuing the Jews from Haman’s genocidal plot was confusingly not treated as a major event of the story, but as a mere afterthought. The novel then ended with the exiled Vashti and her son murdering King Xeres and banishing Esther from the palace. I failed to see the relevance of this to the plot, and would have preferred a more ambiguous ending, as the real story gives us. Mordechai was a very underdeveloped character and I couldn’t understand why the more mature Esther continued to romanticise him so much. The novel’s male characters were all quite shallow and tended towards caricature. Although I enjoyed The Gilded Chamber, I feel like it would have been much stronger if it had continued to engage with the main themes and events of the Megillah.

[Kara · Rating 5 out of 5]

Kohn takes a lot of separate pieces - dusty artifacts in museum cases, architectural analysis of ancient Persian cities, poetry from the Torah, fanfiction of the Midrash, current studies in Psychology on trauma responses to sexual assault, religions of the Achaemenid Empire, and the histories of Herodotus - and swirled them all together to create this wonderful retelling of the story of Esther.

What surprised me the most here was we get more of Esther's stories than usual - from before Mordechai to after Xerxes, rather than ending the story with the death of Haman - and just how clear eyed she was. She has her share of romantic notion, like any teenage girl - but quickly learns to look at things as they are, and learns just what, exactly, the kind of man and king she is married to.

As decadent as the setting is, recreating the lush and luxurious court of the ancient Persian empire, Kohn is clear about the sexual abuse and the horrors of slavery, making no excuses for anyone while also showing how easy it was to be corrupted.

A detailed, suspenseful and well written retelling of the well-known story, breathing new life into it.

[Cynthia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I actually enjoyed this thoroughly. It is a fascinating look into the harems of cruel despots from ye days gone by, and adds depth and richness to the familiar Bible story. The author provides details of both surroundings and inner motivations that made this a terrific read. I took off one star for the ambiguous 'so Esther looks down the dirt road, waiting and wondering if her love will come to her. The End.' The End? Are you freaking kidding me? I mean it's not like we're in historical or Biblical territory at this point anyway. Nobody knows what happened to Queen Esther after the events chronicled in the Bible. (I just Googled it to be sure and no, nobody knows). So since Ms Kohn is making things up out of whole cloth at this point why not give her an ending? To indicate that we don't know? Well, that would be a clever author's way to end a book but as a reader I found it unsatisfactory. And to have a gripping, enjoyable book become unsatisfactory in the final paragraph is a blow.

[Lois Silver · Rating 4 out of 5]

I have read the diverse opinions about this book, and I think the readers who disapproved of it were unrealistic in their expectations. This is a novel, historical or biblical fiction, that details fictional lives behind the story of Queen Esther. It includes details about the life of women in a harem, including being groomed to be available for the king's private attention. It is not appropriate for children because of depictions of extreme hatred and violence as much as because of depictions of sexual matters...but the Bible itself could be considered offensive for detailed discussions of the same topics.
As to the book's story and writing, it is an easy-to-read distracting text as any good novel should be. Like her other novel, this book fills in fictional but possible conversations and day-to-day details that flesh out the story of Queen Esther. I enjoyed it, as did my husband, but we had realistic expectations about what life in that time was like because we have read the Bible and studied history.

[Savannah Lorenc · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this, but despite enjoying the story I feel like the entire thing fell flat. I kept wanting Kohn to go deeper with the characters and their feelings. Esther seemed concerned about the impending slaughter of the Jews, but other plots distracted her often and she never truly seemed very fearful of what might happen. Esther's emotions fell flat: she should have been miserable trapped in the palace, but she seemed more inconvenienced, she had lust and sexual desire for the king, but that was only touched on once or twice, she seemed to have no problem reconciling these feelings for someone who is essentially her kidnapper. Several times Esther communicates that she has no power, yet she seems to get pretty much everything she wants. It just doesn't make sense.

Overall, the novel had the potential for being brilliant, but it was lacking in everything.

[Linda Wolfe · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an easy read, and since I haven’t heard the story of Esther in many years, it is an enjoyable way to revisit and old biblical story.
The cover of the paperback edition that I own is interesting. The model for Esther is certainly heavier than what we consider to be beautiful today, and according to the book, this heavier version would be a model of beauty during this time period and setting. The back notes give no hint if this is true or not. The model also has black hair (which Esther certainly did) but in the book when she is presented to the king and when she is queen her hair is blond. Again, no info in the back notes. I do wish Kohn would have included this information.
There are sexual scenes, but nothing shocking by today's standards.