Book Review: Cleopatra's Daughter

This was a very exciting and captivating book. It begins in Alexandria, the capitol of Egypt, where Cleopatra (Kleopatra) is playing a game of dice (a form of play gambling) with her children, Kleopatra Selene, Alexander, and Ptolemy. When Octavian starts his siege on Egypt, Kleopatra tells her maids to tell her husband, Marc Anthony that she is dead, hopefully resulting in his trying to escape. She takes her children and hides in her unfinished mausoleum (library). They try to wait the battle out, but soon one of Kleopatra's maidservants comes running to tell her that her husband has committed suicide. Kleopatra rushes to the door of the mausoleum to see that her husband has slit his own throat. Marc Anthony gives her his last dying words, leaving a depression-riddled wife and children. Octavian, emperor of Rome, captures them, and keeps them imprisoned in their own house until he can take them back to Rome to show them off in his Triumph, which is basically a victory march. However, that night, Kleopatra commits her famous suicide of having a poisonous cobra bite her. Her 3 young children, Selene, Alexander, and Ptolemy are left orphaned, scared, and alone. On the voyage back, young Ptolemy, only 7 years old, dies of a disease similar to a bad cold. Selene and Alexander, 10-year-old twins, are forced to find their way in Rome, which is strange and unfamiliar.
This book was a very good read, but it has some "adult themes" in play. You won't find it in your YA fiction section of your library, that's for sure. It's not horrible, like Meg Cabot (if you read her books, be scared. Be very scared.), but there's some mature themes.
Rating: PG-13, for adult/mature themes, such as homosexuality (definitely not a lot), and some graphic details, mostly of blood and gore.