My Rating ~ Four stars and a half

4half-gold-stars copy

TO BE RELEASED: 15 August 2018

Format: E-Book

Source: Received as an ARC for review from M Sasinowski

Blurb

Alyssa signed up to study history, not to rewrite it.

An excavation of the fabled Hall of Records beneath the Sphinx unleashes an ancient disease that leaves her father fighting for his life. As Alyssa races to find a cure, she stumbles onto an impossible artifact that could change history—or destroy our future.
With unexpected help from Oxford student Paul Matthews, Alyssa evades ruthless adversaries set on harnessing the power of the artifact. As a global epidemic looms, they must unravel deep secrets hidden within it and unveil the link between a mythical civilization and the birth of Egyptian mythology, before time runs out.
Compulsively readable, M. Sasinowski’s electrifying debut thriller, Heir of Ra, is filled with action, technology, humor, and a generous dose of “what if” that just might have you question your history books.

Review

Many thanks to Mr Sasinowski for providing me with an E-ARC of this book to review. All opinions are my own.

Alyssa and her father have been seeking the lost Hall of Records, under the Sphinx in Egypt for years. Finally her father is given permission to enter the tunnels for an archeological dig for one day. Alyssa is half a world away and can’t make it in time, but something goes wrong inside the tunnels. Her father collapses and is taken to hospital with a baffling, mutating disease. After learning that the World Health Organisation has confiscated everything from the site, Alyssa knows she needs to somehow find out what happened to her father, and how to help him. With the assistance of Paul, who she meets while trying to gain access to the WHO, they try to uncover the secrets from her father’s dig. When they come across an artefact that seems impossible for this time, but is likely thousands of years old, they find themselves on the run from a group of people determined to claim it from them.

This book was gripping from the very first page. Fast paced action intertwined with Egyptian mythology and twists I didn’t see coming. Alyssa and Paul were likeable characters and I found myself holding my breath on their behalf throughout the story. We were treated to ‘flashbacks’ of a story involving the Egyptian gods and parts of history – real, imagined and theorised – that I really enjoyed, even though my knowledge of that history is sketchy. I honestly couldn’t put this book down, it was a wild ride.