PILLAR OF FIRE

Tarr's latest historical is again set in Egypt (Throne of Isis, 1994, etc.), this time in the reign of the Pharaoh Akhenaten, that puzzling figure who attempted to introduce monotheism to Egypt and was succeeded by the boy-king TutankhatenTutankhamon. Akhenaten has imposed monotheism upon his subjects despite widespread resentment and revulsion, and only the fact that he is god as well as king prevents his overthrow. The narrative centers on Nofret, a Hittite slave of Ankhesenpaaten, third daughter of Akhenaten and Queen Nefertiti; the Pharaoh is unable to produce a son despite additional royal marriages with both his eldest daughters. Nofret becomes friendly with the tomb-building Apiru, a tribe that claims kinship with the Egyptian royal house and also worships a single god. Then plague devastates Egypt. To secure his tottering throne, Akhenaten must accept the co-rulership of his brother, Smenkhkare. But then Akhenaten's god, Aten, orders him to go into the Red Land, the desert; so, with the help of Nofret and the Spiru, Akhenaten fakes his own death and vanishes. Shortly thereafter, Smenkhkare and his queen die by poison; Tutankhamon marries Ankhesenpaaten, becomes Pharaoh, and restores the worship of the traditional gods of Egypt. Soon, Tutankhamon will be forced to go to war with the Hittiteswhile from Sinai comes word that the former Pharaoh spends much of his time in the mountains, and now calls himself Moshe...or Moses. The small but telling details of society and everyday life, the heart's-blood of historical fiction, are all too often absent here. Tarr's hard-to-swallow revisionist Exodus ends up neither engaging nor persuasive.