William Smethurst (1945–2016)

Are you a connoisseur of Egyptology? I can't really say that I am, though I do enjoy trivial bits of information about the area, the people that lived there, mythology, weapons, and artwork. My dad went on a tour of Egypt and came back with pictures and presents for everyone, and he piqued my curiosity. I also enjoy the occasional historical thriller. When the publisher invited me to read and review this book, I found the description intriguing. It sounded like it could be a sort of Egyptian show more "Da Vinci Code."

Not even close. This book falls into the "DNF" (Did Not Finish) category, and I will tell you why:

The publisher, December House, wrote "Sinai was originally released in 1996 but has been rewritten and updated for it's e-book release..." The book got off to a rough (slow and confusing) start, but sometimes first chapters are like that, and I forged onward. The very first page—I was reading this on my Kindle—is mostly one sentence, but with a couple of educational bits thrown in in parentheses. And just in case you missed the second sentence on the page, it is repeated in the beginning of the second paragraph. The author seems pretty fond of this tactic.

Mr. Smethurst is also an ardent devotee of passive voice, which means that the trifling amount of action included in what I read came watered down and at a distance from the reader. In Chapter 12 things got exciting when bullets started flying, but the thrill only lasted for one paragraph. One measly paragraph! Then, suddenly, "He was in Cairo."

I wanted to scream. "What? Wait! Where's the heart-stopping terror? The sound of gunfire? Shouting? Screaming? Anything? I'll take a quiet cold sweat, please." And let's not forget that pernicious "was" that completely killed any lingering hope of excitement.

An accomplice gave the appearance of getting chased through the city and up a pyramid, but it was only an appearance. Nothing really happened. At least not within the reader's view.

Along with the re-writing there should have been some re-editing. The book is decorated with punctuation errors, filter words (that passive voice thing!), several typos, out-of-place abbreviations, repetitious phrases, awkward passages (generally involving conversations), jerky transitions, and a heavy sprinkling of names that perhaps a student of the field would appreciate, but the author does not attach any emotional weight for the more casual reader's benefit. I wanted to like this book. I kept looking for something to like...

At 23%, I checked the progress bar to see how much further I had to go.

At 37% I started avoiding my Kindle and turned to washing dishes, doing laundry, paying bills, attempting to rescue information from my jiggered laptop...

Wait a minute, I like to read! How about if I just read something else instead? show less

Sinai is a well-placed thriller. They mystery as its centre is whether there could be a connection in time with the escape of some hapiru from the tyranny of Pharaoh and strange disappearances in the wilderness of Sinai today.

Archaeologist Richard Corrigan, who sometimes is the expert lecturer for tours of the Sinai, becomes obsessed with the possibility of time travel. Extrapolating from the strange behaviour of particles in quantum physics that Closed Time-like Curves (CTCs) could show more theoretically result in people being moved from today to 1300 years ago.

Novelist William Smethurst clearly explains the science. Like all good science fiction, it is hard to see the join between what physicists actually say and where Smethurst has extended that theory into fiction.

Equally rich is the archaeology: one of the currentacademic theories of the Exodus is that small groups of hapiru (outsiders) escaped from Egypt and ended up building a new Israelite society in Palestine. The account of the Exodus in the Hebrew Bible is a conscious re-telling of that society’s foundation myth.

However, the small family of Ruth and her elderly husband Zuri and their children and two old Ethiopian slaves are an imaginative re-creation of what such an escape could have been like. Moses the Magician is there with prophetic words. Joshua the Soldier is competent, and you can believe he would survive the challenging journey through the wilderness.

Young Giliad is a believable runner for Joshua in the battle against Pharaoh’s troops. Smethurst suggests that it could be his body that has turned up in a Cairo mortuary. A more grounded connection is the burial of warrior Shelumiel after the battle and its discovery by the archaeology team in the present day.

The novel works well by contrasting small realistic details: the eyes of vipers in a darkened cave, for example, that terrify Vronry (Corrigan’s on-again off-again girl-friend) and the vague sweeps of description tying together events in the present and the past. What really happens and what happens in Richard Corrigan’s head are hard to distinguish. We travel with him as his obsession with time-travel takes hold of him, and we remain sympathetic to him. He is an unafraid seeker of truth. Vronry balances him with her down-to-earth nature.

Sinai is in the Dan Brown genre; but Smethurst’s grasp of the details of archaeology and ancient near east history are much surer. I found it a satisfying read. show less

I truly enjoyed this adventure through time, space, and cultures. The history and beginnings of the Jewish people has been a favorite topic for me for nearly 50 years. And as a science fiction buff since I could barely read, the combination was irresistible. Smethurst weaves a fascinating tale of past and present, using detailed geographic descriptions to tie together the two story lines. His characters are well-defined and quite believable.
Sometimes you find a book which captivates your show more attention to the exclusion of all else. Sinai was one of these for me. Having visited Israel and lived in North Africa, the visualizations Smethurst used captured me in the narrative, transformating his pages into memories of being there. If you are looking for an excellent book to help you understand the lives and hearts of the people of Moses and their Exodus from Egypt, this is one. show less

The Israelites are driven from Egypt they wander through the desert of Sinai; we know their story as the Exodus. Come now to modern day Sinai and we have our main character Richard Corrigan finding a lost German tourist who’s suffering from dehydration and recites a prayer to the ancient Egyptian Sun God as he dies.In modern day Cairo, Elizabeth St. George takes Corrigan to a city morgue and shows him a corpse that is fresh, yet to his trained eye has all the markings to be 3,500 years show more old.In London Jihadist terrorists try to kill Corrigan, but why? Is he getting to close too some answers and if he is to what? Mr. Smethurst has a spine chilling and possibly provocative book that I enjoyed very much and I know you will as well. show less