★★★☆☆ Cleopatra wuz robbed!

Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra

Stuart Gibbs

Charlie Thorne and the Curse of Cleopatra came into being because Stuart Gibbs read Stacy Schiff's biography of Cleopatra (which I added to my to-read list this morning). Judging by the publisher's blurb and reviews, Schiff wrote her biography with an agenda. Everyone has heard of Cleopatra, but what we think we know about her comes mostly from her portrayal in works of fiction written by men. Schiff points out that men have historically sought to minimize the accomplishments of great women, and sets out to correct the misportrayal of Cleopatra.

Gibbs was completely sold. In his Acknowledgements, he writes, "Then I read Cleopatra: A Life, by Stacy Schiff, which is certainly one of the best biographies ever written." Now, the general formula of a Charlie Thorne book is, we pretend that some great historical figure hid away a secret of great power, and have Charlie hunt it down. Also, the Charlie Thorne books have a purpose: to elevate girls and women. Thus it made perfect sense for Gibbs to center a Charlie Thorne book on Cleopatra.

This was the first thing I enjoyed about The Curse of Cleopatra. Although I was not quite as ignorant of Cleopatra as Charlie assumes her audiences to be, I didn't know much about her, and enjoyed learning more.

The actual story-telling, though, was mostly rather blah. I get the impression that Gibbs is still feeling out how to write a Charlie Thorne book. One improvement over the previous two books is that, in The Curse of Cleopatra, Charlie makes a lot of mistakes. In The Last Equation and The Lost City she was two steps ahead of everyone else, and that's boring. In The Curse of Cleopatra she screws up and is often caught unprepared. That helped.

I suspect that Gibbs writes these books from back to front. That is, he starts off by writing (or perhaps just imagining) an intricate and exciting final scene. That will end up being about 30% of the book. Then he writes the first 70%, in which his job is to maneuver all the players to where they need to be for the final scene to come off. The problem with this, of course, is that for us readers the maneuvers of the first 70% are not very interesting. If you stick it out, thought, you are rewarded with a flurry of cool stuff at the end.

Based on the last sentence, the next Charlie Thorne book will be about Isaac Newton.

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