It's not a bad book, but it's not Pauline Gedge.  Narrator here is too much of a prefect princess.

Disclaimer: ARC via Netgalley. (It is a read now option).  I couldn't finish this because Cleo's voice kept grating on me.

                Coats gets credit for using Cleopatra’s relationship or belief in Isis as well as for looking at the question of her mother. There is enough reference in the book to give credence to the belief that Coats knows her history.

                However, writing Cleo using the voice of a modern teen really doesn’t work. Despite Cleo’s claims of not being a spoiled brat, this is exactly what she sounds like. Furthermore, there is no sense of place. It really could be the school across the street instead of Ancient Egypt. Furthermore, Cleo is far too modern in her language.  She forgets about her mother too quickly. She also is the one everyone hates and wants. True, most the above is a given in much YA (or New Adult) work today, but if you are writing about the great Cleopatra, you don’t really have to resort to it.

In this conclusion to the She King Series, Ironside cements her place alongside Pauline Gedge as a great writer of historical fiction set in ancient Egypt.

                Hot damn this was a riveting conclusion.

                It should be noted that you need to read the other books in the series before this one. This ties nicely into the historical record in a very plausible way.

                Please, please write more historical ancient Egypt fiction Ms Ironside/Hawker!

In her afterword to this third volume of the She-King Series, Ironside apologizes for playing a little fast and loose with history.  She doesn’t play as fast or as loose as Philipana Gregory, and unlike Gregory, that afterword discusses the changes and presents the reality.  In many ways, the apology is unneeded.  Let’s be far, no historical fiction is going to be 100% completely accurate because, in some cases, that would be boring.  In many ways, historical fiction is about the reader and writer finding common ground on changes.  The Other Boleyn Girl is a trashy novel that I kind of liked.  It wasn’t the change in history that bugged me; it was Gregory’s afterword where she tried to argue that her historical changes were the actual truth.  That is a legitimate gripe. 

                So Ironside, no need for the apology.