Instruct: Classify a given review as either positive or negative.
Query: This is Elizabeth Peters?

I find it difficult to believe this pedantic, clumsily-written novel is by the same author as the delicious Amelia Peabody mysteries. Where is the wit, the good plotting? As outlandish as the Peabody books are, Peters writes so well in them that one gladly suspends disbelief. This book seems more like the effort of a not-very-talented undergraduate in a creative writing class. How disappointing! The narrator doesn't help; did she read the book before recording it? Inflections are inappropriate, the heroine comes across as a ditsy dame, and the male protagonist doesn't seem to know whether he speaks with an accent or not.