The Skin of the Gods is packed with intriguing elements — ancient artifacts (an amulet, two rings, a golden box, a book and a Lemurian crystal), secret societies, portals and a rogue spirit. The action zips around chronologically and geographically, from the 1890s to the present day, to ancient Egypt and back to the present. Scenes take place in a Yorkshire village, in London, Egypt, Hong Kong, Amsterdam, Cologne and even in a Tim Horton’s coffee shop in Burlington, Ontario! A few key scenes take the reader to the Duat, the Egyptian underworld. There is a dizzying array of characters, but the principal ones are Beth Martindale, her fiance Matt (who disappears in Chapter 3), Paul Smith, a 19th-century Englishman, and the Egyptian pharaoh Narmer and his wife Queen Nithotep. Many others come and go as needed to move the plot along. The characters are motivated by the classic themes of rivalry, bitter hatred, desire for revenge, and love.

Once the various plot elements are introduced and the time shifts start to make sense, the story becomes fairly compelling. I was happy to follow Beth’s search for Matt, and the transitions of the artifacts of power from their creation to their ultimate fate, as they become objects of desire and pass through various hands, affecting the characters along the way. Getting to that point was a bit of a slog, however, because the author provides a good deal of extraneous information, often describing someone or something several different ways within a single paragraph. Historical background information makes an intrusive appearance in a few places. Beth Martindale’s quirk of reciting quotations adds a touch of humour, but in situations of distress or urgency it’s contrived and irritating.  There are problems with apostrophes, a few awkward usages (such as “stout in stature,” and “tenants” instead of “tenets”) and unnecessary capitalization of some words, such as “Beagle” (the dog breed). Because of these problems, I almost gave up reading within the first 50 pages, but persistence resulted in a fairly entertaining reading experience.

The Skin of the Gods is available as a free download from Smashwords.