The Desert Prince

Writing a sequel is difficult, especially a sequel to a book, The Lost Scroll of the Physician that ends with a real cliff-hanger. Do you plunge right in or backpedal in order to bring new, or forgetful, readers up to speed with what is going on? Sevigny opts for the former approach, with the result that the reader, i.e., me, took a couple of chapters to get my head around what had happened to date and what was going on. However, The Lost Scroll of the Physician ended with Sesha and her two fellow students/scribes/physicians, having freed the Hyksos spy from the pits where such "criminals" were put essentially to die, are about to set out in pursuit of the Hyksos delegation. They want to free Sesha's friend, the Egyptian princess Merat, who, very much against her wishes, has been given to the leader of this group as his bride. The spy, Pepi, has agreed to help them since he knows where they are headed, and they set off down the Nile in a stolen boat, make it across a very inhospitable stretch of desert and arrive at the oasis, now apparently an army training camp where the chieftain is planning his wedding and preparing to attack Thebes. Sesha manages to postpone the first, and, having gained some idea of the strength of the army and, therefore, the vulnerability of her own people, suggests that she (and the "spy" who has been revealed to be a relative of the chieftain) return to Thebes in order to persuade the Pharaoh to pay tribute rather than fight. As well, she will attempt to get back one of the two copies of the scroll of Imhotep in the hopes that it will contain the knowledge which will enable them to cure the chieftain's chief army captain. Success and failure go hand in hand, and, at the end of the book, readers are once again left with the story unresolved, a prophecy concerning Sesha and her brother Ky, now an adopted son of the Pharoah, unrevealed, and a whole lot of sick people needing looking after. Is The Lost Scroll of the Physician the second book of a trilogy or part of a longer series.

We don't know, and I hesitate to say we don't care, but it is a technique that palls after not too long (though Lemony Snickett managed to keep it going by dint of coming to a fairly conclusive ending, ... and then adding one more chapter!). The Lost Scroll of the Physician is less successful than the first, partly because of its less-than-conclusive ending and partly because the plot is getting more and more convoluted. Sesha is trying to be too many things: physician, scribe, friend, sister, possibly lover, spy ... the list is practically endless, and balancing all these roles leaves her as a less credible character. Is she really Superwoman? Perhaps. To be continued in Sevigny's next. The Desert Prince is still a good book, and readers will continue to want to read the next book; but the compulsion has faded.