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Reviewed by Asher Syed for Readers' Favorite
The Lost Wisdom of the Magi: The Memoirs of Sophia Zealotes by Susie Helme is a historical fiction novel set in the first century and revolves around its titular character, a young woman of the time named Sophia. Sophia is the Jewish descendant of a family of scholars in ancient Babylon, indulged by the practice of the time by her father, who raises her among the learned documents of a royal archive. When tradition and trauma intervene, Sophia runs away from home and transitions through the seasons of her life. Traversing lands and positioning herself from caravans to the wilderness to war - and much in between - the strength of a woman who perseveres against all odds while holding true to her heart, her convictions, her faith, and her truths come to life in the form of first-person storytelling. “We bow to the emperors, but our Lord bows to none. They have their Roman laws, and we have our sacred law... Though they subjugate our nation, we would die like rats before we allowed their idols within our holy sanctuary.”
The first thing that grabbed me from the moment I started on Susie Helme's The Lost Wisdom of the Magi is the richness of historical detail. I am unfamiliar with Helme or her work but would not be surprised at all to hear she is a scholar herself. Even the minutiae are meticulously precise and getting lost in the day and age as a reader happens organically. The book is quite dense in its narrative as these details are not just the novel's bone structure but its full musculoskeletal system, making Sophia's surroundings their own fully-fleshed set of characters. I did sometimes feel that the true characters were not given the same degree of fleshing out, but the immersion is one of a kind and the prose is so heartfelt and gorgeous that there is no lack of engagement whatsoever. Very highly recommended.
