TITLE: Like Mayflies in a Stream
AUTHOR: Shauna Roberts
PUBLISHER: Hadley Rille Books
RELEASE DATE: October 1, 2009
WEBSITE: http://www.shaunaroberts.com/mayflies.html

PAGES: 196
ISBN: 9780982514016 (hc); 9780982514009 (pb)
PRICE: $24.95 (hc); $11.95 (pb); $5.00 (ebook)

The setup for Shauna Robert’s Like Mayflies in a Stream, is a compelling one: an archaeologically-accurate retelling of The Epic of Gilgamesh. Hearing that alone was enough to make me order a copy immediately. But while the book is excellently written in many regards, I didn’t connect very well with the characters.

Focusing on the city-state of Uruk during the early reign of King Gilgamesh, it opens with a land oppressed by a juvenile tyrant. The king is restless, which results in men left broken after Gilgamesh wrestles them and brides brutally raped on their wedding days. Shamhat, a priestess of Inanna, is sent out by Gilgamesh to find the wild man Enkidu. The king’s prophetic dream implied that Enkidu will be the peer that will soothe the king’s restless heart. But Nanna-Ur-Sag, high priest of Inanna, has also had a prophetic dream. In the high priest’s dream, Enkidu will be the man that humbles the king and brings justice back to Uruk.

The amount of detail included regarding ancient Uruk is astounding, richly recreating a culture that is very foreign from my own. But the weight of the detail also proved to its disadvantage. As someone who has never read The Epic of Gilgamesh and isn’t overly familiar with the time period, the untranslated words used in the text were very confusing. I could sometimes figure it out through context, but sometimes I was just stumped. Even Google couldn’t explain some of the terms.

The plot follows the same general arc of the original Epic, though reimagined with a stronger sense of realism and told primarily from the point of view of Shamhat. This focus on the original tale left me feeling like the story suffered from the loyalty. While it starts off strong, I quickly lost interest in the characters as the book went on. The attachments the characters possessed felt more explained than made real through narrative, and they risks they faced felt hollow when no ill came from it.

There were also some things that seemed excluded that shouldn’t have been. In the middle of the book, Enkidu suffers from an illness. There is no indicator how long he’s suffered from this illness or what his illness might be. It’s merely handled as though it’s been going on a while and dominates the rest of the story without any indicator of what’s going on. Gilgamesh and Enkidu later travel off to the the Cedar Forest, which is the realm of the gods, to fight the Humbaba, the ogre that guards it. Up until this point the book felt rooted in the realm of reality, so this was a startling turn. It all happens off camera, but they come back with the ogre’s head. Was it really an ogre…?

Overall, it felt like the book needed to be twice as long in order to tell the story it wanted to tell, but because so much is left out it fell flat for me. As a glimpse into Mesopotamian culture, Like Mayflies in a Stream is a fascinating read. And if that is what you’re looking for, you should be happy. But in terms plot and character, there was just too much missing for me to truly enjoy it.