Exclusive interview with author India Edghill and a review of her novel of the Babylonian queens Vashti and Esther
Rating: 3 stars
by Gabrielle Pantera
“Game of Thrones, I’d never read the books, and I only started watching the series because Sean Bean and Jason Momoa were in it,” says Game of Queens author India Edghill. “Then this lovely young woman with long flowing white-blonde hair showed up. I stared at the screen and shrieked, that’s her! I started Game of Queens in 2008 and handed in the first version in 2010. Like many writers, I put up pictures of people who I think look like my characters to stare at while I’m writing. I’d based Queen Vashti’s coloring and character on my best cat ever, Vashti, a silver Persian with chatoyant opal eyes.” (For the uninitiated, chatoyant means having a changeable luster or color with an undulating narrow band of white light).
In the Bible, the Book of Esther is set in the Persian capital during the reign of king Ahasuerus, about 483 B.C. After drinking too much at a banquet, the king sends for his queen, Vashti, with the command that she display her beauty to the guests, an order which she interprets to mean she’ll be nude. Vashti refuses to come, which sets the king to replace her with Esther, who is secretly Jewish. As queen, Esther thwarts a plot to exterminate the Jews.
The backstory is that Ahasuerus became king of Babylon as a boy on his father’s death. His mother Queen Amestris rules for him and picks 10-year-old princess Vashti as his queen. Meanwhile Esther is raised like a boy by her indulgent father Abihail. After casting Vashti aside, the king regrets his actions and proclaims her to be his sister and still a princess. Vashti will help him find a new wife. She and head eunuch Hegai search the land for the most beautiful woman, which is Esther.
In the Old Testament the story of Vashti is just one paragraph, so Edghill expands the story with strong female characters who use their wiles to achieve what they want.
An engaging storyteller, Edghill may remind readers of Phillipa Gregory with her female-centric stories that explore the inner feelings and thinking of protagonists. However, where Gregory would chose one character’s point of view, Edghill head-hops between Vashti, Esther and even Hegai. And, there are a hundred pages of set up at the beginning of Queens. A slow start is the main reason this is a three-star instead of four-star read.
“Queen Vashti is the character who actually sets the story in motion when she refuses the king’s command to display herself in public,” says Edghill. “Once I realized that, I had my idea for the book. Who can resist that empire-wide beauty contest?”
Edghill has written two books for St. Martin’s, one about Michal and one about the Queen of Sheba. When Edghill signed a follow-on two-book deal, her first book was to be about Delilah and the second was untitled. She needed another Biblical woman for that book and ultimately wrote Book of Queens.
Edghill says she started as a writer of Star Trek and Star Wars fan fiction. “Later I wrote fantasy short stories and historical novels…Queenmaker, Wisdom’s Daughter, Delilah, as well as a mystery, File M for Murder.” Queenmaker won the Romantic Times award for Best First Historical Romance in 2002, despite the author’s mild protest that it isn’t really a romance. Wisdom’s Daughter was nominated for RT’s Best Historical Fiction in 2004. Book of Queens has yet to be optioned for film or TV. Edghill is currently writing epic-length romantic historical novel set in 1879 India.
While researching dog breeds for a novel Edghill became interested in the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. She now has four Cavaliers, is active in Cavalier Rescue, and shows her dogs in Obedience and Rally competitions. Born in Shreveport, Louisiana, Edghill now lives in the MidHudson Valley in New York State.
Game of Queens: A Novel of Vashti and Esther by India Edghill. Hardcover, 400 pages, Publisher: St. Martin’s Press (September 1, 2015), Language: English, ISBN: 9780312338930 $28.99
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