⇒ Read Free The Desert Princess Ebook Shorts The Loves of King Solomon Book #1 edition by Jill Eileen Smith Religion Spirituality eBooks

The Desert Princess Ebook Shorts The Loves of King Solomon Book #1 edition by Jill Eileen Smith Religion Spirituality eBooks

Download As PDF : The Desert Princess Ebook Shorts The Loves of King Solomon Book #1 edition by Jill Eileen Smith Religion Spirituality eBooks

The Desert Princess Ebook Shorts The Loves of King Solomon Book #1 edition by Jill Eileen Smith Religion Spirituality eBooks

I'm usually skeptical of novellas. But I like Jill Eileen Smith's other work so much, I'm giving the Wives of King Solomon series a chance. The Desert Princess provides an auspicious beginning indeed.

In The Desert Princess, we meet Naamah, Solomon's first wife, first at age ten and then as a young woman about to be married. She and Solomon have a sweet and deep relationship, partially because they first meet as children, when protocol leaves them unfettered. This gives Naamah a unique opportunity to fall in love with Solomon as a person and not as a royal from whom she could gain possessions or power. In fact, her determination to marry Solomon is touching, if rather naïve.

Once Naamah and Solomon do marry, we get to see her develop into a mature woman. Understandably, she struggles with the idea that a king's power is measured by his harem. She throws herself into being the perfect queen, and it's difficult to watch her try to attain something no human ever could. At the same time, short and condensed though it is, Naamah's relationship with Adonai keeps her hopeful and grounded. I wanted to see more of her spiritual thread, but what exists is pretty good.

Solomon himself leaps off the page too; Jill did a marvelous job of staying true to Scripture while capturing his multifaceted character. One minute Solomon is a wise and discerning king. The next minute, he's a ladies' man and, as Naamah observes, a downright Mama's boy. Is this frustrating? Sure, but so is human nature. Jill paints a great portrait of what happens when a godly person tries to make his or her selfish desires square with faith. (It never works).

Did I want to see more from this book? Yes; I think I'll always prefer novels. I wanted to spend much more time with Naamah, Solomon, and the other characters. But for what it is, this novella is one of the best I've read. Jill manages to show instead of tell, and create an accurate, stunning picture of ancient Israel in a little over a hundred pages. I'm eager to read the rest of the series.


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The Desert Princess Ebook Shorts The Loves of King Solomon Book #1 edition by Jill Eileen Smith Religion Spirituality eBooks Reviews

Well written novella about Solomon's first wife. I liked how Solomon's words in the bible are woven into his dialogue. It's a beautiful story that's also somewhat tragic. Totally relatable story and you see the character from a girl to an infatuated lovesick teen to a more mature teen-though in that time she was an adult. Such a different world. I definitely want to read the rest in the series.
I've been long overdue for the opportunity to read a Jill Eileen Smith novel. Having devoured all three installments of her first series, The Wives of King David, her subsequent stories have -- sadly -- found themselves lost in my toppling to-be-read pile. Happily, The Desert Princess provides the perfect solution for those like myself craving a quick trip into her richly-imagined biblical world. This brief novella is the first of a proposed series exploring the Solomon through the eyes of the women in his life. And with 700 wives and princesses and 300 concubines (1 Kings 113), Smith has a veritable wealth of potential "loves" from which to choose her characters...but with a catch. Compared to the sheer number of women in his life, the verses devoted to fleshing out any of their characters and experiences are incredibly sparse. But Smith has more than earned the right to a little artistic license in my view, for her stories exploring the lives of Michal, Abigail, and Bathsheba reflect her knowledge, understanding, and passion for scripture and the history reflected within its pages.

The Desert Princess tells the story of Naamah the Ammonite, mentioned once in scripture as the mother of Solomon's son, Rehoboam (1 Kings 1421). Smith sets her story during one of the most turbulent periods of David's reign -- when he fled Jerusalem from his son Absalom. She posits that Shobi the Ammonite who provisioned David and his company, mentioned in 2 Samuel 1727, could have been Naamah's father -- and thus Solomon's introduction to the woman who would bear his heir. And thus the stage is set for a lovesick princess to fall in love with David's favorite son. There's more supposition than fact here, which I am typically intolerant of in biblical fiction. However, Smith has little to go on when characterizing Naamah, so allowances must be made.

My biggest issue with this novella is that it is simply too short to do justice to Smith's talent for bringing biblical stories to life within the pages of her writing. That aside, this is a promising start to the Solomon series, as she uses the heavily fictionalized Naamah to frame Solomon at a critical point in his youth -- favored but not yet proclaimed David's heir. Naamah's interactions with Solomon hint at the wisdom to come by revealing his facility for wordplay as well as his penchant for pleasure. I look forward to discovering how Smith both frames an older Solomon in further novellas and gives a plausible, sympathetic voice to the now silent women who once inhabited his world.
Jill Eileen Smith has her own way of bringing out possible Biblical romances. In this series (The Loves of King Solomon), Jill's view of Solomon's first love just melts your heart.

Naamah is the beloved in the Song of Solomon, daughter of one of the princes subject to the Israelite king. She first meets Solomon when David is running from his son Absalom, and even at ten years old is enamored of the favorite of the king. Solomon and she exchange correspondence for a few years, but then he abruptly stops when she reaches the age of thirteen. Naamah wonders why. Finally she talks her father into taking her with him to Jerusalem.

Her adoration of Solomon has, if anything, increased, and she begs her father to offer her as a wife to Solomon. Naamah's father warns her that a king must have many wives to form alliances and establish his power, Solomon will, of course, become king--but Naamah is love-blind..They become betrothed, and a year later they marry. She's ecstatic--and so, apparently, is Solomon.

How will this young woman from thousands of years ago handle what would devastate the modern woman? Find out at or Barnes and Noble or several local bookstores!

I was given a free copy of this book by the author, but the opinions and evaluations are my own.
I'm usually skeptical of novellas. But I like Jill Eileen Smith's other work so much, I'm giving the Wives of King Solomon series a chance. The Desert Princess provides an auspicious beginning indeed.

In The Desert Princess, we meet Naamah, Solomon's first wife, first at age ten and then as a young woman about to be married. She and Solomon have a sweet and deep relationship, partially because they first meet as children, when protocol leaves them unfettered. This gives Naamah a unique opportunity to fall in love with Solomon as a person and not as a royal from whom she could gain possessions or power. In fact, her determination to marry Solomon is touching, if rather naïve.

Once Naamah and Solomon do marry, we get to see her develop into a mature woman. Understandably, she struggles with the idea that a king's power is measured by his harem. She throws herself into being the perfect queen, and it's difficult to watch her try to attain something no human ever could. At the same time, short and condensed though it is, Naamah's relationship with Adonai keeps her hopeful and grounded. I wanted to see more of her spiritual thread, but what exists is pretty good.

Solomon himself leaps off the page too; Jill did a marvelous job of staying true to Scripture while capturing his multifaceted character. One minute Solomon is a wise and discerning king. The next minute, he's a ladies' man and, as Naamah observes, a downright Mama's boy. Is this frustrating? Sure, but so is human nature. Jill paints a great portrait of what happens when a godly person tries to make his or her selfish desires square with faith. (It never works).

Did I want to see more from this book? Yes; I think I'll always prefer novels. I wanted to spend much more time with Naamah, Solomon, and the other characters. But for what it is, this novella is one of the best I've read. Jill manages to show instead of tell, and create an accurate, stunning picture of ancient Israel in a little over a hundred pages. I'm eager to read the rest of the series.