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Community comment are the opinions of contributing users. These comment do not represent the opinions of Pima County Public Library.
Aug 17, 2014DorisWaggoner rated this title 3 out of 5 stars
The story itself fascinates me; I like historical fiction, and I know some about what happened at Masada. Clearly Hoffman had done her background research. Doing a story with four different 1st person segments is risky, because the reader must always be able to tell who's "speaking." I always knew when Yael was speaking, since she came first. After that, it was harder to tell who was who, though their stories were compelling. Each woman was fictional, though could have been real, if you want to accept the magic, as people did at that time. As I neared the end of the book, I read an archaeology article on Masada saying that current research indicates the group had plenty of food and weapons. They probably couldn't have held out forever against the Romans, since their weapons weren't as good as the Romans', but their choice of of mass suicide at the time they did was a choice, and definitely not the massacre SPL's "description" says it was. Josephus, the Jewish historian turned Roman apostate, who's the only written source on Masada, calls it suicide, and the archaeology supports that. He says a very small handful of women and children survived, and I finished the book primarily because I wanted to know which ones Hoffman would pick.