3.5 Stars

What I Liked
Tosca Lee is one of my all-time favorite authors. She writes beautifully. After a few lines of reading, I am completely immersed in the worlds she creates and unable to break free until the last page.

I gained so much historical knowledge and context through Legend of Sheba. Lee also does an amazing job at making Biblical characters feel more real to me. Instead of having the feel of the flat figures on a felt-board, Bilqis and Solomon stand brightly off the page and I now have a glimpse of perhaps what these people were actually like so many years ago.

What I Didn't Like
This is controversial, but Tosca Lee seems to suggest that Song of Songs was written about the queen of Sheba, but some glaring contradictions bothered me. Song of Songs talks about a virgin, about that she grew up as a laborer, etc, etc.

Spoiler

The fact that Solomon and Bilqis never marry but spend their time as lovers makes me a little uncomfortable. I understand that this was Solomon's greatest weakness, but this sin was depicted a little too much as beautiful romance and not enough as something that was wrong. I found myself over and over again rooting for the two to finally be together, which meant that I was virtually rooting for Solomon to disobey God.