Ramona Wheeler

This is an alternate history set in a timeline where Caesar lived, he and Cleopatra prevailed, and the line descended from them continues to rule an empire dominated by Egypt over 1,800 years later. Lord Scott Oken, a British prince, a younger son of a line descended from both Caesar and Cleopatra (not just one or the other), is a young man who has made his career serving as a spy and agent for the Egyptian royal court.

His mentor and friend, Professor-Prince Mikel Mabruke, is a Nubian show more prince, as high-ranking as anyone outside the immediate Egyptian royal family, and an expert in alchemy, which is to say poisons.

Oken, on a recent trip through Europe, uncovered evidence of a nasty plot involving ambitious native leaders in Britain, Oesterreich (Germany), and Russia. The details aren't clear, but there's a religious aspect as well as the political, and the group apparently calls itself the Black Orchid.

He arrives home from this trip just in time to help rescue Prince Mikel Mabruke from another, apparently unrelated, criminal conspiracy, known as the Red Hand.

With both men recovering from injuries and clearly targets, the Queen decides to send them a way for a while to investigate another mystery: among the Incas of the New World, someone claims to be planning to launch a trip to the Moon.

This world does have air travel, at least the Incas do, but even they have only what seem to be ornithopters, gaining lift from hydrogen, and powered and guided by humans and birds. It's a bit of a stunner when word reaches the Queen that the Incas are planning to launch mission to the Moon. The idea captures her imagination and, if it's true, and has a chance of succeeding, she wants to offer Egypt's support.

Surely this will be a relatively restful, restorative, but enlightening, journey for Oken and Prince Mabruke. What could go wrong?

I do have some complaints. Many centuries after a major historical change with huge downstream effects, we have numerous individuals with familiar names playing roles that just haven't changed enough. Leonardo da Vinci still painted Mona Lisa. Galileo still made his major breakthroughs in astronomy. Otto von Bismarck and Victoria & Albert are significant figures, and Verdi is still composing operas, although thankfully different ones. Ordinarily, I would regard this as a "hurl the book against the wall" offense, but Wheeler is insidious. Every time I hit one of these outrages, I roll my eyes and keep reading because, after all, I have to know what happens, right?

That's good writing, and really good story-telling, when what is ordinarily a major pet peeve for me has zero effect on my desire to keep reading. Not just this book; I hope we'll be seeing more from Wheeler, in this world and others.

Complaints about what I consider anachronisms aside, I like this projection of what an Egyptian-dominated empire might have become, as well as the further development of an Incan Empire that never fell because Europeans didn't arrive early enough or in large enough numbers to bring down it and every other Native American civilization with Europe's killer diseases. It feels plausible to me, and is well-executed enough to be the basis for a really engrossing story.

Highly recommended.

I received a free electronic galley of this book from the publisher via NetGalley. show less

DNF. The world building is the most interesting part of this novel. There are scenes that are nothing but the characters interacting with the world, that do nothing to advance the plot. All the characters are royal and male, and hard to distinguish. The action scenes take very little time at all, while dinners and lounging around in luxurious quarters take pages and pages. It just got too slow for me, even though i loved the premise of the world.

Three Princes is a book that seems to be based on the question “What if Egypt never stopped being great?” In Three Princes,The eastern hemisphere is ruled by a civilized, modern Egypt; the western by a fusion of the Incan and Aztec empires. The novel is apparently set in this alternate universe's early 19th century. There is a bit of a steampunk vibe accompanying the strange melange of speculative fiction that Wheeler has committed to the page. The story itself is excellent, especially show more if you like espionage, but what I really appreciated were the books concept and its perspectives on gender issues and religion.

The titular three princes are Lord Scott Oken, Professor-Prince Mikel Marbuke, and Prince Viracocha. Lord Oken, the fourth son of a prominent family in the Britannic Isles, is the story's protagonist. Although not originally from Egypt, he was educated in Memphis and became a part of the Pharaoh's spy network. Oken is a memoryman—a person with perfect eidetic memory, trained to recall all—and student of and assistant to Professor-Prince Mabruke. Mabruke trains young spies for the Pharaoh and, as his cover, teaches university courses in aromatics. The Pharaoh calls upon Oken and Mabruke to investigate rumors that the Incas are building a craft to fly them to the moon. In the course of their investigation, they encounter the third prince, the good-natured Prince Viracocha, son of the Incan emperor.

Our princes face the rebellious Black Orchid Society whose mission is to bring down Egypt and replace her reign with that of Queen Victoria, at least one insane Incan prince, and various unnamed European nobility. Without giving too much away, I will say their plan for world domination hinges on a scheme to send the aforementioned moon-bound craft into space to rain explosives down on Memphis. The princes' journey involves a delightful man-powered flying craft called quetzals (the Nahuatl word for feather), plenty of espionage (Egypt's preferred way of doing business, talking is much more civilized than fighting, as they say), and lots of beautiful people.

Read the rest of the review at http://digitalmanticore.com/?p=228 show less

Since I found out that Three Princes is set in an alternate reality where Egyptian empire never ceased to exist, I was looking forward to reading it. I’m crazy about Egyptian culture, history and mythology, so I was dying to learn how Ramona Wheeler imagined that the world would develop if the awesome empire who built the pyramids still existed. But when I actually started to read Three Princes my excitement soon died down and slowly became replaced by indifference. Finally at 42% (around show more 150 pages) I officially decided to mark this book as DNF and proceed to the next one. As some wise person said: Life is too short to waste it on books we don’t like.

As always, I will try to explain why Three Princes didn’t work me me and hopefully it will help some other reader with similar taste to avoid trying to read this book, or even intrigue someone with opposite taste to give it a try.

From the start, I encountered my first problem with Three Princes . Main hero: Lord Scott Oken. At 27, he’s an Egyptian spy and reminded me most of James Bond. He’s always at the right place at the right time, somehow against all odds survives and observes all women as sexual objects.

And we’re already encountered my second issue with this book. Lack of strong female characters. If we make an exception for the Queen of Egypt, all women are just there for decoration, sex or to be exploited by our smart and handsome spy. As I already said, it’s all very reminiscent of famous 007 agent. In fact, I was surprised that Three Princes was written by a female writer since to me it seems like it’s oriented for male readers.

Maybe I would have ignored my antipathy for the hero, if the world charmed me as I expected. But, although this book is full of descriptions, the main things I was looking forward was missing. How come Egyptian empire still exists? This is the main question I wanted answered and I got nothing except mentions from time to time about some union between Caesar and Cleopatra. But there were a lot of totally unnecessary details about life in towns and tribes Lord Oken encounters on his travels. Knowing the exact pattern of painted colors on naked woman’s chest was not my top priority, so I was mostly bored with these attempts of world-building.

And I won’t even start to comment of so-called ‘steampunk’ – since there are no steam engines I would never label this novel as that genre. There are some weird flying machines but trying to understand ‘scientific’ background how they fly will only give you a headache. It would have been better if it was left a mystery…

IN THE END...
If you are a male fantasy fan and are looking for an alternate history novel about young spy who travels a lot, encounters a bunch of pretty women and nefarious villains – then Three Princes is the book for you. Readers looking for complex characters where everything is not black and white or more to the story than how awesome Lord Scott Oken is, will probably be disappointed.

Disclaimer: I was given a free eBook by the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for a honest review. show less