The Mummifier's Daughter

I’ll admit, I approached *The Mummifier’s Daughter* skeptical of yet another ‘plucky girl defies the odds’ historical narrative. But Burns subverts the trope by making Neti-Kerty’s rebellion *messy*. She’s not likable in the way we’ve been trained to expect—she’s prickly, occasionally cruel, and her obsession with proving herself borders on self-sabotage. That’s what makes her compelling. The story’s strongest moments aren’t the embalming scenes (though they’re visceral and well-researched), but the quiet confrontations: Neti-Kerty bargaining with a grieving widow for a corpse to practice on, or her father’s exhausted sigh when she botches a ritual *again*. These are the cracks where the real drama seeps in. Kevin Clay’s performance is mostly excellent, though his female voices occasionally veer into caricature—Neti-Kerty’s mother, in particular, sounds like she’s perpetually on the verge of a melodramatic swoon. The production, however, is flawless: the audio levels are crisp, and the lack of background music lets the weight of the silence (and the occasional *thud* of a body hitting a slab) land with impact. My biggest critique? The pacing stumbles in the middle act, where political intrigue slows the momentum. A tighter edit could’ve shaved 30 minutes without losing depth. Still, by the final scene—where Neti-Kerty’s hands, stained with decades of resins and blood, finally earn the right to wrap a pharaoh—I was sold. This isn’t a book about breaking barriers; it’s about the cost of chiseling your name into them.