Twilight in Babylon by Suzanne Frank is the final book in the continuing adventures of Chloe and Cheftu and once again Suzanne Frank is on top form.

This fourth instalment picks up the story in Jerusalem where the couple have made their home and lives together.  They have now been together for seven years but all is not bliss and happiness. 

Unable to have children Chloe feels unfulfilled and Cheftu feels that he has failed her.  The strain is beginning to tell when Cheftu returns home to Chloe with the good news that he has a new position that will enable them to leave Jerusalem and travel to Egypt.  But he is unable to convey his news to her because he returns home to find the house on fire and Chloe unconscious and burned.  All his experience has a healer is no use as he realises that he cannot save her.

Hurrying her to the Temple Mount Cheftu prays for her to be spared and watches her vanish from his side.  He then has to wait to see if he can travel to where she has gone to or whether this is the final separation for them.

Chloe has indeed travelled once more but this time things are vastly different in that she has lost her memory almost completely.

In a new body and a new time Chloe cannot remember any of her past other than strange impulses and remarks that make no sense to her.  She cannot even remember Cheftu.  Indeed it would seem that Chloe is not the dominant personality in the body she now inhabits.  Unfortunately the other personality is not a great deal of help and when asked for her name answers Chloe. 

The body she is in is that of the sole survivor of a flood which has wiped out her village.  Gathering her flock of sheep and a goat (who she names after members of her modern family - but without knowing where the names are from) she travels to Ur, a city which shows remarkable parallels with the modern world.  Democracy and writing are already there but the time is still very much ancient.

Chloe is taken in by the kindly Ningal and helped in making her place in the city.  A visit to a mysterious woman brings back Chloe's memory and she finally sees her new reflection.  But although her memory has returned she is puzzled as to why she has travelled through time again, she does not recall the fire in Jerusalem, and even more importantly she does not know where Cheftu is and is told by the mysterious woman that she will not find him yet.

Chloe sets about making a life for herself but in her typically modern way soon begins to get a few enemies, in particular those who resent her wanting to learn in the male dominated Tablet House. What those enemies will do to stop her from achieving her goals brings about her central role in a plot against her life.

Cheftu though eventually travels into the same time as Chloe but for the first time he is not in his own body and Chloe cannot recognise him, nor he her because of the vast difference in her own new vessel.  However their souls do recognise each other and once again they must fight against plots in order to be together. 

In a journey that leads Chloe and Cheftu to Ancient Babylon and to an answer to their question of why they have been sent back and forth through time.

A lot of fun can be had during the first part of the book wondering just who Cheftu will appear as.  There were so many characters and possibilities one can't help but wonder what would have happened had he entered the body of one of the others. 

A vast array of characters help to make this book as rich in plots as its predecessors.  There are also several instances were Chloe sets up particularly amusing references for modern archaeologists, for example using a symbol similar to the McDonalds "arches" for her own culinary enterprise.  Modern humour in a vividly portrayed ancient land has never been done better than this.

Although there are still some unanswered questions at the end of the book they are ones which are perhaps better not being answered as they would only generate more questions for the reader most of which could never be answered.

This book is a fitting conclusion to the series as we journey with Chloe and Cheftu through Sumeria in their search for a life together and a place to make their own.
 

RATING : 
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Also by J. Suzanne Frank:  Reflections in the Nile, Shadows on the Aegean and Sunrise on the Mediterranean.

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