Book Review: The Book of Esther

Genre: Um.... I'll get to that.

Publishing: Tim Duggan Books - June 14, 2016

I don't really know where to start with this book. The premise sounded really cool and I wanted to love this book! It follows the Jews in an alternate reality as Hitler wins WWII. It's kind of steampunk, kind of historical fiction, kind of fantasy, kind of adventure, kind of Christian... ug! It's just this hodgepodge of genres that sort of confused me when meshed all together. However, kudos to the author for being original! I have NEVER read another book like this.

Okay, let me break this down a little more. This is the story of a young woman (16 years old) named Esther. As more and more Jewish refugees come to her country from Europa to avoid the Germania attacks, Esther begins to realize there is a problem. Esther is the oldest daughter and destined to marry the Rabbi's son, however, she wants to fight and save her people.

Sound familiar? Sound similar to a story from a well known book? Yeah, that's cause it is.

Now, let's get some mechanical horses, aeroplanes, and golems involved in the war and you have this book. I will warn you, push past the first couple of chapters. They are pretty much information dumps. There are a bunch of words I didn't get because I only speak English and a gazillion names that I couldn't follow thrown at me at the beginning. I felt like I needed a flow chart or kept having to flip back to see who was who again. I couldn't keep them straight. Once I got past that, it was pretty good. It moved a bit faster, but that first part of it was really hard to get through as I figured out what the heck was going on with the story.

I am going to say this book was OKAY and give it TWO stars... **

To learn move about the author, check out her website here. https://www.emilybarton.com She is a very well educated woman.

This book has lots of mixed reviews though, so feel free to check it out for yourself. You can find it on Amazon by clicking HERE.

I received this book from Blogging for Books for an honest review.