Karen Rhea Nemet-Nejat

What ages would I recommend it too? – Twelve and up.

Length? – Several evenings to read.

Characters? – Memorable, several characters.

Setting? – Real World BC in Ancient Mesopotamia.

Written approximately? – 1998.

Does the story leave questions in the readers mind? – Ready to read more.

Any issues the author (or a more recent publisher) should cover? Yes. I would like to see the "Legacy of Ancient Mesopotamia" expanded.

Short storyline: This is a fascinating look at Ancient Mesopotamia that covers as many aspects of their daily live as possible. There are overall sections, as well as sections broken into individual segments so locating facts can occur easily. This also tends to lead to occasional repetitions.

Notes for the reader: There are many places where repetitions occur. Often, this is to make things that appear in more than one aspect of their daily life findable if people only rad one segment, and not all of them. There are places where facts appear contradictory, then the reader realizes they are contradictory because they more than one civilization contradicted each other.

A a writer, this is an excellent reference for anyone writing pre- or post- writing history novels.

One of my favorite lines - from page 307 "Common knowledge and practice were often not recorded." Writers today are told to not mention common knowledge, because everyone knows it. Guess that's ancient advice. Although, we kind wish it wasn't because there is so much we don't know about ancient culture because it was common knowledge then, and not written about!

Makes you wonder: Will our descendants declare our generation illiterate because of the demise of the written word? They won't be able to read our "cloud." It won't exist.… (altro)