SOUNDTRACK: Hiatus.
[READ: July 4, 2022] Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra
This is the third book in the Charlie Thorne series. And there will clearly be a fourth.
Sarah brought this home and was very excited about it. I was pretty excited to read it as well. Our excitement was justified, because Stuart Gibbs has created a great heroine, an intriguing mystery and a thoughtful historical quest.
One of the things I liked best about this book was the historical information about Cleopatra. We all know all about Cleopatra. Except that everything we know is incorrect! The course of (male) history has been very unkind to Cleopatra–she was an amazing woman and ruler and has been historically described as little more than an exotic temptress.
In the acknowledgements, Gibbs, heaps praise on the book Cleopatra: A Life by Stacy Schiff. I have just checked out the book and the first chapter is fantastic.
The Prologue is set in Alexandria, Egypt in 30 BC. Cleopatra was being held prisoner by Octavian–Julius Caesar’s nephew. Cleopatra and her husband Mark Antony were united in a war against Octavian–but they had lost.
Octavian lied about how he would treat Cleopatra after Mark Antony’s death. She discovered this and was preemptive about her own fate. She did not kill herself with an asp–rather, she drank poison and burned down her mausoleum. And her great treasure was destroyed wit her.
Staying in Egypt, the book shifts to the present day. At the end of the last book Charlie has escaped from the CIA as well as the Mossad, the national intelligence agency of Israel.
Now she is sneaking into a party in Giza, Egypt, at the penthouse of Ahmet Shah, the oldest son of a wealthy shipping magnate. Ahmet has a ton of security because he has a ton of expensive things in his house. But one thing that Charlie wants is not expensive–it is information.
She hopes to get a rubbing from an ancient Egyptian tablet that was believed to have been written by Cleopatra.
It’s an exciting scene and it sets literally everything else in motion.
Because as soon as Charlie leaves the party, she is followed by the Mossad through the desert–on a motorcycle. Charlie is 13 by the way.
The CIA agents who are still after her are her half-brother Dante Garcia and his (now) girlfriend Milana Moon. They have been with her since the beginning as partners and enemies (they want her secured for the CIA and she doesn’t want to be secured by the CIA–but they both agree on pretty much everything else).
The new problem is that their boss, Jamilla Carter had been fired by the CIA specifically because Dante and Milana had failed to bring in Charlie. She was being replaced by Arthur Zell. I love the detail that Zell
had not worked his way up through the ranks of the CIA to get this job. He was a political appointee, a middling congressman who had risen by making friends in all the right places.
I have to assume that this is a dig at the previous administration’s policy of appointing the worst people for the job.
By the middle of the book, Charlie is held by Dante and Milana (and they are working together). They have used the information from the tablet to get to the second of Cleopatra’s clues. I love how the sites have been mostly destroyed by history (the clues are in the sites of ancient Rome), but Cleopatra hid them perfectly so they were still findable.
But the people after them are also really smart. And they are able to trace our heroes pretty easily.
Soon enough, they are followed by the Mossad. Also by the Shah family (there’s no way that the Shahs would allow a 13 year old good to show them up–especially if she figured out a clue that he never could). And also by the CIA. Which means that Zell has essentially fired Dante and Milana–making them fugitives. Just like Charlie.
The quest leads them to New York City–right under the CIA headquarters–where they have to find something in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I love the way Gibbs is able to hide something in an artifact that millions of people see on a regular basis. Was there any basis for any of the clue locations?
What they find is amazing (as was the last one). It’s hard to imagine that whatever he has in mind as the ultimate goal of this series can be more impressive than their discovery here.
I enjoyed this book quite a lot. Although the running from the same guys is getting a little overdone. I’m assuming that with Dante and Milana no longer in the CIA, it will change the dynamic of future endeavors. And I look forward to Zell’s comeuppance.
But regardless of these minor quibbles, I am definitely on board for the next book. I can’t wait.
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