River god

The first half of the book is wonderful. The descriptions are rich and vivid as Smith takes his time to slowly unravel their stories. The pace is perfect. As the characters age, though, Smith spends less and less time exploring their psyche until eventually the book writes more or less as a factual listing of events. I wish he'd kept the slow, easy pace throughout - of course given the already hefty size of this book it probably would have meant splitting it in two. As it is, though, I felt a bit cheated when I reached the end. Nevertheless it's a great read, and I'll pick up the others in the Ancient Egypt series at some point.