King and Goddess - Hardcover

COLEEN MARLO was named Publishers Weekly’s 2010 Audiobook Narrator of the Year. Marlo is a two-time nominee for the prestigious Audie® Award, and has received three Listen Up Awards from Publishers Weekly. She is a member of The Actors Studio.

My first novel, The Isle of Glass, appeared in 1985, and eventually won the Crawford Award, as well as being a finalist for the Locus Award for Best First Novel. My YA time-travel science fiction/fantasy/historical novel, Living in Threes, appeared as an ebook from Book View Café in 2012, and is now in print. My new novel, a space opera, will be published by Book View Cafe in 2015. In between, I've written historicals and historical fantasies and epic fantasies, some of which have been reborn as ebooks from Book View Café. Various of my novels have been finalists for the World Fantasy Award and the Locus Award, and I've had short stories reprinted in Year's Best anthologies and collections of classic fantasy, science fiction, and alternate history. I live in Arizona with an assortment of cats, two dogs, and a herd of Lipizzan horses.

Another of Tarr's historicals set in ancient Egypt (Pillar of Fire, 1995, etc.). Queen Hatshepsut, daughter of Thutmose I, is the Great Royal Wife of Thutmose II, her brother. A mere girl when she became Queen, Hatshepsut only reluctantly admits the petulant Thutmose to her bed, developing meanwhile a friendship with the haughty young scribe Senenmut. And when Hatshepsut finally gives birth to a daughter, Neferure, she's barren thereafter, and Thutmose must sire his heir, the future Thutmose III, upon the concubine Isis. And when Thutmose II dies of fever, his son is too young to take the throne, so Hatshepsut becomes Regent. Senenmut, now the Queen's lover and confidante, remains wary of her protector, the giant Nubian, Nehsi. Neferure grows swiftly into a headstrong young woman and, after a foolish affair with Senenmut's brother, becomes pregnant, only to die in childbirth. With Thutmose slow to mature, Hatshepsut, prompted by the god Amon, declares herself King, and proves popular with commoners and nobles alike. Thutmose, still in awe of her, nevertheless grows frustrated and embittered. King Hatshepsut commissions spectacular monuments, and sends Nehsi on an important trade mission to the land of Punt. Finally, after Senenmut's death, Isis poisons Hatshepsut. But Thutmose must wait 20 years, until Nehsi finally dies, before attempting to uproot Hatshepsut's memory by defacing her monuments and despoiling Senenmut's tomb. An uncompelling yarn whose lifeless characters and lackluster backdrop fail to capture the spirit of singularity of the historical period: the least successful of an at best mediocre series. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.