And the 52nd book I have completed this year is . . . . Hittite Warrior by Joanna Williamson. I actually have a dim memory of reading this before a few years ago, but I really, truly didn't remember much of it at all, except that Deborah, the lady judge from the Old Testament, makes an appearance.
I read this with Sean who was assigned it in his Aquinas Learning coursework for Literature and Composition. It is a fast-moving, young adult novel with a complicated plot that involves many of the ancient civilizations we read about in our history books. The book is told in first person by Uriah-Tarhund a young Hittite boy whose family is killed by the 'sea people.' He travels down to Canaan to find a friend of his father's. Traveling through the city of Tyre, he gets waylaid for a while with a family who takes him in. This family is half Canaanite - half Egyptian. Later he travels inland and meets the Israelites (this is where Deborah comes in). Later, we encounter an evil Philistine and his equally evil sidekick from Crete. It is a veritable soup of ancient tribes fighting and trading in the Eastern Mediterranean!
The plot is quite swift-moving and pretty complex with lots of characters with strange names to try to remember. There's a lot of coincidences that happen too, that make things slightly less believable than I found satisfactory. However, the book really reinforces the history learned of these peoples. And the tie in to the Old Testament was neat. We learn about Moloch, Baal, the Egyptian god Aton and the Hebrew God Yahweh. The strongest element of the book for me was the way it really recreated the atmosphere of the ancient world.
A worthwhile read for sure! For more reviews go to 52 Books.
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