Napoleon's Pyramids

by: William Deitrich

Published by: Harper Collins

Reviewed by Jeff Foster

In the turbulent days of post-revolutionary France, American Ethan Gage, a protege of Benjamin Franklin, finds himself behind in his rent and unable to purchase food. He cobbles together his subsistence by demonstrating the wonders of electricity, taught to him by Franklin and is considered by the various savants (scientists) of France little more than a street magician.

One evening he finds himself indulging his favorite vice, cards. In one particular hand he duels with a French army officer. The officer has confidence in his hand, but his lack of funds causes him to produce a large gold medallion, which he claims is very old, ancient in fact and once belonged to a notorious Italian Egyptologist. Gage wins the hand and the medallion. And immediately encounters the mysterious Count Allesandro Silano, who offers to purchase the medallion for as much as twice what Gage won in the hands of cards.

Gage refuses and here starts an odyssey that will send Gage fleeing from the Parisian police, the French army and into the hands of Napoleon Bonaparte, who is in the process of launching his famous expedition to Egypt in 1799. With the help of friend and journalist Antoine Talma, Gage secures passage in Bonaparte’s corps of civilian scientists and sails to Egypt.

Upon landing, Gage and Talma witness first hand the storming of Alexandria and the taking of Egypt’s only port city on the Mediterranean. Upon entering the city next to Bonaparte, whom has now become personally interested in Gage, his medallion and the potential secrets it will unveil, Gage saves the petite general from assassination, Gage also meets the mystical Astiza, a Greek slave girl and naturalized Egyptian who will join him on the journey to uncover the medallion’s powers.

William Deitrich places the reader in the most prominent spots of all the skirmishes and major land and sea battles that were fought in the French invasion of Egypt. You’re in the middle of a French infantry square facing Mameluke cavalry at the battle of the Pyramids, and on the quarterdeck of L’Orient facing Horatio Nelsen and the English fleet at Abukir Bay.

Armchair Interviews says: Exquisitely written and wonderfully detailed. Your summer reading list has a winner!

Author’s Web site: http://www.WilliamDietrich.com