Recreated

I loved the first book Reawakened by Colleen Houck. Naturally, I knew I would love the sequel. Her prose is spectacular.

The words she chooses brings the reader deeper into Lily Young's world. The beginning of the novel felt Egyptian and, being a lover of ancient Egyptian mythology, I knew what to watch out for. However, in the middle of the book after Lily transforms into a sphinx, it kind of veers into more Greek and English mythology.

It confused me. And it began to feel less Egyptian. Don't get me wrong, the plot is great and I loved seeing her take on the Duat (ancient Egyptian underworld) and Amun-Ra. What really confused me was when she addressed that Horus, the falcon deity, referred to Amun-Ra as his uncle.

????

I know now it was to help her story flow but I also felt we lost the family tree of Horus. Horus was the son of Osiris and Isis. Set or Sutekh, as I refer to him, was his uncle. Not Amun-Ra. Even though she gave a good reason why Horus decided to call Amun-Ra uncle instead of Sutekh, which I don't blame him, it still felt untrue to the Egyptian mythos.

I got further confused and a little disappointed when Lily asked for Kherty's help to ferry her across the sea of the dead. She depicted him as an old man instead of a mummified ram who had an accent of either English or Irish referring to terms like 'ya' instead of 'you' or 'yer' instead of 'your'. Though she kept saying it was the Duat it began to feel more like the Grecian Underworld.

It got even more strange when Amon found a little Irish sprite in the Duat. What?? She, the sprite, told the story of how she got there and it still confused me. I kept thinking, if she had died along with the tree in Ireland then she would go the Irish afterlife. Why would she end up in an Egyptian Underworld???

I thought her take on Ammut was interesting. I cheered when she depicted the Devourer as a woman. Though, I never did picture Ammut as a villain before. 🤔 What bothered me most was that she described Ammut's skin as cream. I understand that she was in the Netherworld where there is little to no sunlight but I still felt like Colleen could have described Ammut as a pale brown instead. The reason the cream color is associated with ancient Egyptian women is because it represented that they stayed indoors a lot more so they would have had a lighter shade of skin tone. It didn't necessarily mean that was their skin color.

I did love the Turquoise Forest though. Very ancient Egyptian. :D Overall, the love between Amon and Lily made me tear up a few times and the words leaped off the page for me. I felt the love Colleen was depicting. It radiated in my bones. Very few authors can do that to me. T.A. Barron being one of them.

The book ended with a twist that I won't share. Let's just say, there's another one. For fans of the The Red Pyramid series by Rick Riordan, you might like Reawakened.