Mara, Daughter of the Nile by Eloise Jarvis McGraw

[meganbmoore]

Seventeen-year-old Mara is an Egyptian slave during the reign of Hatshepsut. Because she speaks several languages due to a past master requiring it so she could assist him in his work as a scribe, she catches the attention of two important men, both of whom want her to do the same thing: pretend to be the translator for Inanni, a Babylonian princess who is to marry the queen’s nephew, Thutmose III, while secretly using the job to pass on messages. The first man is Senmet, a devoted follower of the queen who seeks to root out and destroy a rebellion. The second is Sheftu, a member of the rebellion who wishes to put Thutmose III on the throne.

As a slave with no rights, property or future, Mara has no loyalty to either ruler, and doesn't believe it's owed to either one, but she wants the freedom and riches offered to her, so she decides to play both sides against each other. As she does so, however, she finds herself sympathizing with and becoming friends with Inanni, and slowly both being won over to Thutmose III’s side, and falling in love with Sheftu.

For the most part, I liked it. Mara’s voice felt a little modern (well, 1950s-modern) at times, but she was honest with herself and pragmatic, and thought fast. I especially liked that it was her friendship with Inanni, not her love for Sheftu, and their conversations that eventually lead to her choosing a side, and that she doesn’t change her mind about anything because she fell for the rich guy, he just happens to be on the side she eventually choose. (Which is not to say that the rich guy isn’t great and all, I’m just glad she didn’t go the “ruled by love” route.)

My only problem is that, given how strongly and determinedly neutral she was early on, it never really felt like there was a strong case made for why Thutmose III would win her loyalty. There were hints from the way other people talked to her about him, but I never felt like a strong enough case was being made for Mara choosing a side.

Mostly unrelated to the book, but thinking about Mara and her loyalties helped me realize why I so often have troubles with the whole “enemies as lovers” thing: very often, at some point, there has to be a betrayal. Unless it’s something like Zuko in Avatar or Sorcha in Willow, where the fact that they’re decent people underneath makes it clear they’ll eventually have to change sides (also because the good guys can’t really win if they don’t) or Basara, where they’re ultimately working to the same goal, it’s hard for me to buy it for a character I’m supposed to like. It’s not often that the canon can sell that to me as a positive thing or pull it off in a way that doesn’t make me inclined to stop liking characters, much less buy into it for fanon.

Comments

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

It felt to me a lot less like Mara came to feel a sense of loyalty to Thutmose himself, and more like she came to realize that his side was the one that ultimately had the best interests of Egypt as a whole in its mind -- Hatshepsut's supporters were yes-men only interested in their own personal financial gain and power, with no regard for the country's security or the economic well-being of the little people. Thutmose himself was somewhat charismatic, but also about as arrogant and self-centered and entitled as you would expect from someone who was raised to consider himself a divine ruler -- he's really not all that different from his aunt, when you come down to it, he just has a better set of advisors who care about more than just lining their own pockets. I felt a little bad about it when I first read it as a child, but rereading as an adult I was glad the author didn't marry Inanni off to him anyway -- I wouldn't have bought him suddenly developing feelings for her, and she's a nice girl who deserves better than a loveless dynastic marriage in a foreign land that makes her feel stupid and homesick. (I also loved how the author undercuts the negative first impressions Mara and the rest of the Egyptians have of the "stupid foreigner" by making her good sense and resourcefulness instrumental in saving the day.

[lotuseyes.livejournal.com]

Mara was one of the first books about ancient egypt I read...oh about like 18 years ago (I was like 7 I think or almost there anyhow). I've read about two billion times since. XD

I think what slowly dawned on me was that Mara saw the differences in how each side showed their supporters loyalty and trust. Hatshepsut (which now i'm a little mad they show her in such a malicious and cruel light, but at the time I thought 'hey this must be true its in a book!') clearly did not trust her advisors if she so willingly believed her Vizer betrayed her just because Sheftu said so. Thutmose however believed in Sheftu and trusted him to act on his wishes even when given incentive not to (strong incentive no less). The man became a bloody tomb robber for him! How can you doubt anyone after that, in a culture that is raised to believe the dead are sacred and the Pharoah's are especially holy?

now I want to re-read the book. I hope I didn't pack it...

[lotuseyes.livejournal.com]

I meant to add:

when you will die by either side's hand when they find out the betrayals you acted out...wouldn't it be better to side with the one who has someone rooting for you? If Mara chose Hatshepsut's side, and the betrayal came out, I bet'cha Hatshepsut would have used her and then had her killed. She was a paranoid person. Mara had no one defending her in that camp.

Thutmose however trusted Sheftu and Mara trusted Sheftu to rally for her if the need arised. Though he was a bit of an arrogant man even if he made my heart race as a teen. Kind of indicative of my taste in men now actually...

[the_rck]

When I first read the book, in elementary school, I utterly missed the romance. I loved the book and reread it multiple times, but it took me years to understand what Sheftu's story role was and why Mara interacted with him the way she did.

This was one of the books that made me love the M section in my elementary school library.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

O HAI, I LIKE YOUR ICON!

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah...I think I just wasn't convinced that he actually was the better choice. There was the charisma, but what little she knew of the man himself (especially given her friendship with Inanni and his treatment of her) made me think she'd feel more inclined to not support his side.

I think the handling of Inanni is one of the stronger parts of the book, because it's a well done case of a character being set up to initially look like a dismissable stereotype, who we learn is anything but, and we learn it alongside the main character.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Heh. Yeah, there are a lot of things that I missed as romance as a kid and went back to and "Oh, hey, they're totally a thing!"

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think the thing is that, outside his trust of Sheftu, he kind of came across as a jerk. Especially to Inanni, and Inanni had a lot to do with Mara's changing.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Hmm...I THINK I MAY LIKE YOUR VERSION OF IT BETTER!

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Bwahaha! It's for the taking, 'cause I didn't make it. The credit is in my userpic info.

[mystickeeper.livejournal.com]

Apparently, I forgot how to reply to a thread.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

I think it's less that Mara was sold on Thutmose himself, and more on the sort of people he had supporting him: Senmut's men were all pretty much unrelievedly threatening and creepy, while Sheftu, though he wasn't above threatening her to get her to do what he wanted, also seemed to be personally sympathetic to her plight as a supposed runaway slave -- and then you've got the folks who are following Sheftu. Nekonkh was downright warm and sympathetic and fatherly, and Sheftu's old nurse who ran the tavern -- Merenptah, I think it was? -- seems stern at first, but clearly cares for him a great deal. Seeing all of these common folks who are the most part kind and decent risking their lives to throw their lot in on that side, and having that long conversation with Inanni about how what's important is the land and the people itself, not personal loyalty to a ruler, seems to have been the real tipping point.

And I love the interactions with Inanni -- Red was a little bothered by how she's presented as a fat, gauche, stupid hick at first, but I liked how it really showed Mara's own biases and growth as she comes to get past her own insular judgements. Mara may be the one who gets to be the active heroine running off to warn the conspirators and save the day, but she'd never have managed to get out of the palace without Inanni's resourceful help finding a way out where Mara's own cunning finally failed. It also helped, for my tastes, that it's made clear that Inanni is coming from her own very different cultural referents, and doesn't think of herself as unattractive or badly-dressed -- from her POV the Egyptians are too thin to be truly pretty, their clothes are scandalously skimpy, and the men are ruining their looks by going clean-shaven...

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Heh...I don't remember just how old I was when I first picked it up, but it was old enough that I did pick up on the romance -- I think it was pretty much the first love story that I really, really got heavily invested in (and honestly, it still works better for me than a lot of grown-up genre romances). I suspect my imprinting on this, Moonlighting, Remington Steele, and lots of 1940s movies at an impressionable age are a big part of why I'm so weak for relationships where there's a lot of verbal sparring as part of the romance...

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I never got the impression that Inanni was really a "fat, gauche, stupid hick." It struck me from the start that it was cultural biases and "stranger in a strange land" speaking, not any actual stupidity or unattractiveness. I felt more like I was supposed to want to smack Mara (and the others) upside the head than that I was meant to see Inanni as unattractive.

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think Gargoyles was the first time I noticed romance as romance, which has both Goliath/Elisa and Fox/Xanatos, and then started noticing it in things like Princess Bride and Willow, that I'd already been watching. Which would explain the love for Stoic Meaningful Staring and Cat & Mouse, as well as pairings that gave as good as they gor on every level. And the love for black armor. I'm not quite sure when I picked up the love for verbal sparring...I suspect it's from imprinting on Jubilee when we were the same age, and evolved when I started noticing it in other characters and romantic pairings. Cable/Domino gave me my first moment of "OMG SAP" in non-sappy scenes, which would explain the "old war buddies" love, and things like Diamondback/Captain America and Gambit/Rogue explains the "good person and person trying to be good because of them" bit.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Well, it's all from Mara's POV and she is pretty dismissive of Inanni's clothing and figure at first, and so are many of the sneering Egyptian nobles that she overhears -- so there are a lot of nasty remarks about her brains and looks and dress sense flying around. I didn't feel like the author was necessarily agreeing with them, what with how she's got it set up so that we see Mara's views changing, but there was enough of it that it made Red a bit uncomfortable.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

I really enjoyed this book, for a lot of the reasons that you mentioned. I loved how practical Mara was, and while I was sad that the pharoh was written as the villain, I thought how much love did not soften Mara where it mattered made up for a lot.

(I love the scene where she throws the ring away and then goes to look for it.)

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

It was mainly the fact that Mara's ideals of beauty line up with most Western ideals of beauty, so it felt less like deliberate cultural biases and more like the classic 'make the secondary leads less pretty.'

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

I think Hatshepsut was evil because history demanded that she lose. Which is kinda why I had a little trouble with her choosing sides...there was a bit of a "history demands..." feel to it.

The ring scene was great "righteous indigna...oh, screw that, that thing is worth money!"

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

Well, also, you have to remember it's fifty years old, and the scholarship on Hatshepsut in those days was in a very very different state. The classic 19th C. Egyptology view was that she was up to something nefarious in keeping Thutmose III from his proper place on the throne, and the destruction/erasing of her monuments and inscriptions were his revenge when he finally got out from under her thumb; I don't think you started to see a lot of more positive interpretations of her reign until the 1960s. So having Hatshepsut be more of the bad guy here is pretty much what you would expect for a book from this era. I did like that she was at least not a total evil caricature -- she's pretty much just as attractive, charismatic, and arrogant as her nephew, and the problems with her reign have nothing to do with her being some cartoon sadist who likes to watch the people suffer: she's just busy with her own self-aggrandizing projects and never even *thinks* about the suffering of the common people who have to fund them.

And yeah, that ring scene is just so perfect -- her heart may be breaking, but damnit, she knows she has to PRACTICAL, and if she survives this mess, she'll need that for the money.

[smillaraaq.livejournal.com]

*nod* It would have bothered me a lot more if Inanni had bought into it and was angsting about how much prettier the Egyptian girls were. But I really, really liked that she got to keep and assert her own standards. (And all those bulky, "unfashionable" layers of heavy shawls and veils help save the day when she smuggles Mara out of the palace...)

[meganbmoore.livejournal.com]

Yeah, that's kinda what I meant by "history says she's evil so she's evil." Kinda like Shakespeare writing Joan of Ark as a devil worshipping whore, because, hey, that's how she was viewed at tyhe time. (Though, of course, Hatshepsut's portrayal was nowhere near that level...) I generally try to take when something was being written into account in terms of social/historical awareness, with limited success.

[redbrunja.livejournal.com]

It did have that history/story demands it feel.