Crocodile on the Sandbank (Amelia Peabody #1) in Around the World in 80 Books

Sep 11, 2020 Judy rated it liked it · review of another edition

I had heard a lot about this series and was looking forward to it, but this book wasn't quite what I thought it would be. It isn't a murder mystery, as I had thought, but a mock-Gothic adventure in 19th-century Egypt. There was also a lot more romance than I had expected.

I liked the main character, Victorian traveller Amelia Peabody, who starts off seeming rather prim, but turns out to be surprisingly resourceful. The main plot in all honesty isn't particularly interesting and the villain is obv ...more

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Jun 24, 2016 Jocelyn rated it really liked it

Thoroughly enjoyable.

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Sep 13, 2021 Nina ( picturetalk321 ) rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: genre-fiction, author-white, a-reviewed, europe, z-read-gelesen-2021, author-woman, europe-uk, landscape-desert, genre-adventure

A jolly romp of an adventure-romance with a thoroughly enjoyable heroine and some terrific chemistry between her and the curmudgeonly unlikely hero. He reminded me of Charlotte Brontë's Mr Rochester (from Jane Eyre) and especially M. Emanuel (from Villette). The setting is an archaeological dig in 1880s Egypt and the author's professional background in this field makes pleasurably informed reading of archaeological detail. The Wild West context of chaotic digs, shambolic museums and unscrupulous A jolly romp of an adventure-romance with a thoroughly enjoyable heroine and some terrific chemistry between her and the curmudgeonly unlikely hero. He reminded me of Charlotte Brontë's Mr Rochester (from Jane Eyre) and especially M. Emanuel (from Villette). The setting is an archaeological dig in 1880s Egypt and the author's professional background in this field makes pleasurably informed reading of archaeological detail. The Wild West context of chaotic digs, shambolic museums and unscrupulous thievery and dealing in antiquities is interestingly evoked and not something I had thought about. The intrepid heroine is gutsy, rational, frustrated with the trappings of feminine respectability, no-nonsense and a dab hand with her umbrella's ferrule. She is also of that type of Englishwoman who was practical and fearless in the jungles or the deserts, ploughing forth into native villages and flying the flag for British pluck.

Which is where my sympathies ended.

The book was published in 1999. There is no excuse for its colonialism. Yes, it is set in a colonial imperialist era where Britons thought more highly of themselves than of any "natives". But other historical novels have managed to look back with a critical, reflective, inclusive eye (KJ Charles is superb at this) and, after all, if I want to read undiluted 19th-C adventure, I can just read a novel from the actual era. I don't need to go to a historical novel for that.

How I would have loved the irascible and glamorous hero to have been an Egyptian! How delicious if the heroine could have somehow filed off her sense of white superiority and fallen for a handsome Arab! Or even: how good it would have been if the bunch of white friends had cared enough for their faithful servant Mohammed to make an effort to find him after he had been abducted by villains! Had any of their own nationality been abducted, they would 100% not have continued blithely about their business. But Mohammed is left to rot. No sense of irony or critique pervades the talk of "superstitious natives". Shameful.

I have today started to read Namwali Serpell's The Old Drift which starts out with an even more obnoxious white British colonial in Rhodesia, the story told in that man's voice. But there is a breath of knowingness that redeems it. It is this which I found missing from the Amelia Peabody (murder) mystery (nobody gets murdered btw; this is a super cozy).

A pity as otherwise this was a super fun read. ...more

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Jul 18, 2021 Ann rated it it was ok · review of another edition

Shelves: 2021-aty-52

Typical cosy mystery with well-developed characters and exotic setting. Strong feminist lead but I don't want to continue the series anymore, with all the xenophobia and Anglophilia with references to the "Master Race". Shudder. ...more

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