Murder at the Feast of Rejoicing

by Lynda S. Robinson

Reviewed by Coral

What is supposed to be a relaxing trip home to visit his daughters at his country estate turns into tragedy for Lord Meren, as his viper-tongued cousin Anhai is found dead. Though there are no obvious signs of violence, the odd placement of her body suggests that she didn’t die of either natural causes or from an accident.

In order to solve this crime, Meren will have to confront the very real possibility that the guilty party is one of his own family members.

This was the first book of the series where, while rereading it, I found I didn’t remember anything about the mystery and was pleasantly surprised by the resolution. I hope that means that my fears about clues being overlooked in the first two books were unfounded and it was only because I had remembered parts of the stories.

Though I love the overall setting of the story, there is one part that confuses me. Meren adopted Kysen 10 years ago. Kysen is 18 years old now so he would have been 8. Since the books are set in the fifth year of Tutankhamun’s reign, that means that Kysen would have been living with Meren for 3 to 4 years of Akhenaton’s reign (taking into account Smenkhare’s short time as Pharaoh in between) . But is seems like, for the most part, that Kysen is unaware of everything surrounding that time. Admittedly, Akhenaton would have died when he was 10 or 11, but it still seems weird to me.

Other than that, I’m glad that we finally got to meet two of Meren’s daughters in this book. I hope we meet the third one soon too. I liked seeing the dynamics of Meren’s family, especially how his decision to adopt Kysen affected them – and still affects them.

Oh, I also found it a little weird that with all of the concern that Meren and Kysen had for protecting Meren’s daughters with a killer on the loose, that Remi seemed to be overlooked in the story. Actually, Remi seemed to disappear completely from the story after the very beginning.

Grade: A