How many stars? I am not sure....... I would highly recommend this novel to anyone who is deeply interested in the early Christian church. The setting is 9th century Egypt, under Arab-Muslim rule at a time when the majority of Egyptians were still Coptic-Christian. Egypt had previously been under Byzantine rule. The Byzantine Church, known as the Melkite church and like the Coptic Church is also considered Orthadox, had brutally persecuted the Copts.
The story follows the lives of two Coptic priests who have been sent to a region where the land farmers have been revolting against the Arab rulers, Even though I have traveled numerious times to the Egypt and thought I was fairly knowleable, I learned a lot reading this book. That being said, I also realised that I am not all that interested in the differences between religions. I tend to always look for the unity and similarities in religions, so find it difficult to comprehend why people would fight over what seem to me to be small differences. There are lots of theological religious discussions that I just found too long to be enjoyable. It is also a very masculine novel with no interesting female characters.For these two reasons, I did not like the novel as much as I hoped however I did appreciate it because of all the detailed history.