Marie Corelli was a highly popular writer of sensational novels in the Victorian era. She combined high melodrama with an attempt to reconcile Christianity with reincarnation, astral project and other spiritual aspects not generally associated with Christianity. With Ziska, Corelli uses the medium of novel writing as a vehicle for just that crusade.

The plot of Ziska takes place in the British society's "Season" in Cairo. According to Corelli, t is just the same as the London Season, only with slightly looser morals, giving the greater opportunity to find husbands for daughters past their prime on the marriage market. The Princess Ziska has appeared on the scene, and taken this tight community inducing philosophizing, this would have been a rather good read. There was drama and humor and emotion, as well as interesting characters, but there was just way too much laborious, stilted conversations about spiritualism that kept interrupting the flow and made Ziska a struggle to finis

At first, "Ziska: The Problem of a Wicked Soul" may seem like an odd title for what is, in essence, a romance. It is perfectly appropriate, however, when one learns that the story is about the darker side of the kind of love that "many waters cannot quench . . . nor can the floods drown"--the only kind of love that Marie Corelli believed in.

The story revolves around the mysterious Princess Ziska, who captivates the set of European tourists who are escaping their continent's harsh winter, in exotic Egypt. In particular, she draws three men towards her--Denzil Murray, a Scottish highlander; Armand Gervase, a French painter; and Dr. Maxwell Dean, an English historian and Egyptologist--for very different reasons.

During a costume ball, she comes as her namesake, Ziska-Charmazel, a woman who lived during the reign of Amenhotep. At this point it becomes clear that she has a diabolical agenda that involves one of these three men--her Twin Soul, the reincarnation of Araxes, a great Egyptian warrior and lover of Ziska-Charmazel.

Corelli tells this tale beautifully. The foreshadowing is excellent and the pace never lags. She keeps the reader in total suspense until the ending--which is proper, as "Ziska" is a mystery story (with some juicy horror elements). Unlike her more well-known reincarnation romance, "The Life Everlasting", which had a perfectly predictable ending (not necessarily a bad thing), "Ziska" has a conclusion that is anybody's guess.

It may _still_ be anybody's guess. Though this novel was written only a mere century or so ago, it is dedicated to the present incarnation of Araxes. Where _he_ is, there Ziska-Charmazel shall also be. It's a nice, spooky thought.

of-the-century fascination for the mysteries of Egypt and what was then (and maybe still is!) alternative spiritualism.