Reflections in the Nile by J. Suzanne Frank is one of those time travel novels that sets the standard for the genre.

Set in Ancient Egypt it brings the world of the pharaohs to life and gives us a whole new way of looking at the exodus of the slaves of Egypt.

Chloe Kingsley is an artist from Dallas who is visiting Egypt and finds herself in the body of RaEmhetepet when a journey into a room she should not enter catapults her back in time.

Unable to speak at first Chloe is shocked to find herself in the body of someone else.  Only the colour of her eyes remains the same.  Even more frightening is the fact that she can sometimes access the memories of her host.  Cast into the middle of a dangerous political situation Chloe takes the only option open to her and becomes RaEm.

Finding a friend in Cheftu, a Hemu neter (physician-priest) and former lover of RaEm's she slowly begins to get used to her new life.

When Cheftu is called to examine RaEm he can find nothing physically wrong with her.  But the more time he spends with her the more he begins to notice that the woman he almost married has changed beyond belief.  It is only a matter of time before Cheftu finds he is falling in love with RaEm all over again, but this time he finds he loves her soul and not just the physical beauty that attracted him before.

Together they defy their superiors and the powerful woman pharaoh Hatshepsut in order to make a life together.

Witnesses to the mass exodus for Egypt they travel far along the Nile in the hopes of finding a place for themselves.

The research that has gone into this novel is astounding.  Egypt is brought to life before your eyes and the Exodus takes on a whole new twist through the eyes of the modern Chloe.  With a particularly unexpected twist part way through, this novel is one that grips you until the end and you just do not want it to end.

My only complaint with the book is that it begins in the first person tense, but once Chloe travels through time it becomes the third person, until right at the end when it suddenly reverts to first person again.  This is just a pet peeve of mine and once I was engrossed in the past I soon forgot about it until the very end.

However despite this, this book is a brilliant start to a wonderful series of which all four novels are now published.
 

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Also by J. Suzanne Frank:  Shadows on the Aegean, Sunrise on the Mediterranean and Twilight in Babylon.

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