A Voice for Independent Authors

“You can kill a book quicker by your silence than by a bad review.”
― E.A. Bucchianeri

REVIEWING TODAY: THE SEARCH FOR RASHA BY PAUL B. SKOUSEN

The inveterate reader will often confess: There is only one thing greater than a great author; a great storyteller. And though the two may be one, a great story transcends great writing. Paul B. Skousen is a masterful storyteller. The Search for Rasha, number three in a series, may display beautifully clean, concise, and crisply articulated writing, but one does not feel that he is reading a book so much as he is now sitting entranced by a campfire listening to an old-time bard tell a most dramatic old-time story. Historical adventure is the game at hand, a tale of love in peril, a young woman kidnapped by some bad guys, escaping with the help of some good people, chased relentlessly at length by those same bad guys, and valiantly sought for rescue by the young lovestruck man left behind. All in a foreign land – the badlands of Egypt – in a time so very long ago. If you are not enchanted, you are dead.

Paul B. Skousen tells the story of The Search for Rasha with a polished economy of writing rarely seen today, and certainly with a poetic beauty and sense of presence mastered only by experience. It may seem hyperbolic praise to add: this book reeks of intelligence and knowledge. Academic authenticity saturates this high-paced thriller with immediacy and belief. One tastes the fruits, smells the smells, feels the heat, and fears the awesome natural dangers, like the krokodilos and cataracts endemic to old Egypt’s famous river, the Nilus, and it is Mr. Skousen’s persistent attention to the smallest details that makes this book so pleasurable to read. That, and his truly great storytelling.