Writings of a Reader: September 2022

Book Cover

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

Category: Adult
Genre: Mystery, Suspense, Romance
Content: Strong language, Hashish smoking

It's all a grand adventure when English Christy Mansel unexpectedly runs into her cousin Charles in Damascus. And being young, rich, impetuous, and used to doing whatever they please, they decide to barge in uninvited on their eccentric Great-Aunt Harriet—despite a long-standing family rule strictly forbidding unannounced visits. Because when the Gabriel hounds run howling over the crumbling palace of Der Ibrahim in the Lebanon, someone will shortly die.

A strange new world awaits Charles and Christy beyond the gates of Dar Ibrahim—"Lady Harriet's" ancient, crumbling palace in High Lebanon—where a physician is always in residence and a handful of Arab servants attends to the odd old woman's every need. But there is a very good—very sinister—reason why guests are not welcome at Dar Ibrahim. And the young cousins are about to discover that, as difficult as it is to break into the dark, imposing edifice, it may prove even harder still to escape.

Ok, so there are quite a few covers to this book. I happen to own more than one of them. In paperback, and ebook. I couldn't decide which one of these I liked the most, so I put all three of them on my review! There are elements that I like about each one, and I think the perfect cover would have a little something from each. I like that the first one actually shows the mountains, and I love the colors. I think the castle looks a bit more like I pictured the outer walls of it to look. The second one actually has the camels on it and I like that aspect of it. This one looks the least like what I pictured in the book. The castle looks more like a mosque and nothing like the castles I found in pictures of Lebanon. Also all the sand and no mountains makes it feel more like some desert oasis. I do, however love the colors used on that cover. The third cover has the dog pictured on it and I like that, since they are pretty significant in the book. I think the castle on this one is the most like I pictured the one in the book. I also like that it has mountains, but the setting is a bit too stark, and the cover lacks the beautiful colors of the other ones. But enough about the covers. Now as for what I thought of the story...

This was both the same as the other Mary Stewart books I've read, and different. Being set in Lebanon and Syria, gave the book a slightly different feel than her other books, while at the same time, it followed the same formula. It also still had all the recognizable Mary Stewart touches. The lush descriptions, the feeling of being in a new and picturesque place— I love these things about her books.

The book started out slow, but eventually built into a nice suspenseful story. For a while there, I thought I would give it 4 stars, but unfortunately, every time the suspense got going, it would sort of fall flat. I think it had a lot to do with the way the villain was written. There wasn't enough menace to him. The sense of danger would spike, and then it would ebb too soon, because he didn't really seem to want to hurt her. This happened repeatedly. If the suspense had stayed ramped up for longer, and if I had felt Christy was in real danger, I would have liked this more.

Then there is the ick factor of cousins being in love with each other. Apparently, the US version of the book makes them second cousins instead of first. First cousins or second, it doesn't matter to me. That's just weird. I do know that it is still legal in many countries for cousins to marry, but it was hard for me to get past. This resulted in the romance not feeling like insta-love, like it does in the other Mary Stewart books I've read. Normally, I would say no insta-love is a good thing, but we get cousin love instead, which is even worse!

All that being said, I still liked this book. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed reading it, since it isn't one of her more popular ones. The main character was pretty bold in this book, compared to some of Stewart's others, and I liked her a lot. At times I thought she was smart, but then at other times she would do something and I would be scratching my head. There were a couple of things in the book that I thought were questionable. Like, how could a person be smoking hash and think it was tobacco? The smell alone would be noticeable enough for them to know something was off, even if they had never been exposed to that before. And does it really take smoking three before you would notice the effects? I have no experience with this other than smelling it on other people, but it seemed implausible in the book.

Overall, I thought this was good, but not great. It certainly isn't one of Stewart's best books, but it did satisfy my need for suspense in the way that only Mary Stewart seems capable of satisfying.

Here's how it fits into my ranking of Mary Stewart books so far.

1. The Moonspinners
2. Nine Coaches Waiting
3. Madam Will You Talk?
4. This Rough Magic
5. The Ivy Tree
6. My Brother Michael
7. Wildfire at Midnight
8. Airs Above the Ground
9. The Gabriel Hounds
10. The Stormy Petrel

Here are photos of places that were visited in the book or could have been inspiration for the it.