Let me preface this by saying that I am generally a big fan of Elizabeth Peters and her Amelia Peabody series.

But I couldn’t figure out how this book works in the timeline of the rest of the series.

Guardian of the Horizon is set in 1907, before the Great War. In this book, Ramses is 20, and Nefret is 23. They haven’t fallen in love yet, but they’re building up to it.

The love story actually becomes fulfilled in Lord of the Silent, which is set in 1914. But By then, Nefret would be 30, and at that time, that would have been a remarkable age for a woman to be unmarried (ok, technically she was a widow, but she had only been married for a couple of months, to the wrong man) and childless.

But in these novels-of-manners, with their heavy social commentary, that’s never remarked upon. It seems strange.