Rating: 
Summary: Favourite for a long while!!!
Review: In the last few books, the inclusion of "Manuscript M" somewhat annoyed me, because I hate Amelia not knowing what's going on, in the lastest outing, the aforesaid manuscript appears more than ever, but due to a promise "to keep no secrets from each other", I actually look forward to it, and at some points found myself screaming: "Hurry up Amelia, let's get back to Ramses and Nefret!!"This book has been well worth the wait. We get to see R & N dealing with married life, we don't make many new friends, but we meet an awful lot of old ones, including one particular very old friend, whom I had nearly forgotten. In fact I had to go back and read the book in question to remind myself of a few details. But I won't spoil the surprise.
Rating:
Summary: Return to the Past with Style
Review: As a long-time fan of Elizabeth Peters, I am happy to see that with this book, she returned to the time when the focus of the Amelia Peabody series is on Amelia and Emerson, rather than on Ramses and Nefret and others (which is not to say that I have not thoroughly enjoyed these characters and their romances and adventures as well). While I can understand the necessity of aging the characters in such a long series, I personally am not ready to see Amelia and Emerson consigned to the old archeologists' home, where they are merely subsidiary foils for the rest of the cast. This is a much better book than her previous one, wherein the plot was lost in a maze of uninteresting characters. Thanks to the device of finding lost papers of the "missing years," Amelia and Emerson go back in time to return to the Lost Oasis, one of the most intriguing and satisfying adventures of the series. In short, Amelia is back in full force. Enjoy!
Rating: 
Summary: The Honeymoon Book
Review: "Lord of the Silent" is a cozy, gold-washed epilogue to the suspenseful quartet of the "Ramses" books that began with "Seeing a Large Cat" and crashed to conclusion with "He Shall Thunder in the Sky."
In brief: Ramses and Nefret are essentially on honeymoon. All the tension that relationship ever generated is pretty much resolved. Emerson and Amelia have their splendid son, beauteous daughter-in-law, precocious great-niece, and extended "family" of loyal, true, virtuous servants around them. An old antagonist of sorts shows up in the figure of Margaret Minton, the blueblooded yellow journalist of "The Deeds of the Disturber" (Looks like she never married the Irish guy. More's the pity.), and there's an old flame of Nefret's (not one ever shown 'onscreen' before, though) lurking around, but things are pretty tame. By the time it's hinted that someone has returned from the dead (AGAIN), there's an inevitable feeling to it all...
Hey, I did like the book. It had good bits. The final scene was touching in a grand way. I don't think the "Novel of Suspense" subtitle is merited unless Peters was joking, though. The 'resurrection' part of the book held very little suspense, and the final villain was... not very involving. It's a character book, which is fine, because I love these characters.
I didn't like the new brat much, though. My real problem with "Lord of the Silent" is this-- lack of suspense and weak villain aside, the entire Emerson-Peabody-Abdullah clan is now too large and too perfect to be believable. Except for one lazy youth (Jamal), the children are all prodigies, and the servants are all heroes. Everyone is handsome or beautiful, intelligent or insightful, brave, etc.
A book with a vast array of perfect people set against a loser villain is not going to be very suspenseful. It's an extended valentine to the characters, almost like a deliberate way of allowing them to unwind after the last three or four books. That's fine. In some ways, it was quite nice. And this one is still better than The Hippotamus Pool.
Still, this is the last book I plan to read in the Peabody series. I would like to read the "inserted" books, like "Guardian of the Horizon" and any more that Peters writes like it (books plopped in between existing ones to fill in the gaps), but chronologically I am happy to leave them where they are at the end of this work-- all sorted out and bathed in the light of the sun.
I give it three stars because two is just too low. Two and a half, perhaps.
Rating: 
Summary: I was "Bored of the Silent"
Review: I feel I must protect other unwitting prospective readers from this directionless, suspenseless, bore. Being a fan of all things Egypt and an Agatha Christie fan as well I thought this book would be sure to please---not so! Short of Grisham I've never read about heroic characters so impossibly beautiful, charming, intelligent, desirable, and perfect in any way and SO boring. Was this a mystery? I don't remember much of a plot at all. Just characters going from one place to another and getting engaged in conflictless conflicts. Finally, why set it in Egypt if you intend to use next to nothing of the country, its people (other than a few trite stereotypes), and its antiquities?
Reading it on a long plane flight, I actually pondered whether finishing the book or crashing would be preferable. For my guilty pleasure I'll go back to Stephen King---Tolstoy by comparison.
Rating:
Summary: Awesome
Review: I love this book. The suspense, the action, everything is amazing. I've read some reviews that complain that the focus of the series has moved from Amelia and Emerson to Ramses and Nefret, and I couldn't be happier about it. I love Amelia and Emerson, but sometimes it's nice to shift focus. We still get plenty of great things from those two, but now we're getting even more from the younger people. Think of the switch of focus as getting more, not less. This book is a must read for anyone who likes the series.
Rating: 
Summary: Lord of the Silent
Review: I should have known this book would be bad when the Amazon.com reviewer remarked that "Innovation can be overrated." The author has completely run out of ideas. There is not much plot to speak of. Much of the book consists of characters ruminating about things that happened in prior books. More than half the book concerns Ramses and Nefret - absolutely perfect, gorgeous, intelligent, plucky, devoted, and totally boring. They belong in a romance novel. The only suspense here was wondering if I would bother finishing the book. The only mystery was why I bought it. The first couple of books in this series were good - stick to them and skip this one.
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