Wisdom's Daughter (India Edghill)

This novel is set some years after Queenmaker, and focuses on the reign of King Solomon and his encounter with Bilqis, the Queen of Sheba. Edghill begins by pointing out the few paragraphs in the Bible in which the Queen of Sheba appears, and declaring that her offering is a complete imagining with the bare bones of fact. But what a fun imagining it is.

The narrative is what I disliked most about Wisdom's Daughter - it switches wildly, from Solomon's daughter, to Bilqis, to Solomon's dead wife, to many of his living wives... at one point, where many of the wives tell their own stories, it becomes almost farcical. We veer madly off the main plot, but eventually it settles down to a few storytellers, and we move along. The novel circles mostly around the Queen of Sheba and Solomon's only daughter, and the relationship they develop throughout the story. It's a fun, mildly feminist, mildly mystical novel, and I loved her descriptions of the streets and the people of Jerusalem, which are done beautifully. 4 out of 5.