This Week’s Book Review - The Physician of Nineveh

Books and Media
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The Physician of Nineveh
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Looking for a good read? Here is a recommendation. I have an unusual approach to reviewing books. I review books I feel merit a review. Each review is an opportunity to recommend a book. If I do not think a book is worth reading, I find another book to review. You do not have to agree with everything every author has written (I do not), but the fiction I review is entertaining (and often thought-provoking) and the non-fiction contain ideas worth reading.

Book Review

Seeking Answers in the Future

Reviewed by Mark Lardas
September 28, 2025

“The Physician of Nineveh: A Time Travel Historical Fantasy of Ancient Mesopotamia, Forbidden Magic, and Love Across Time,” by Glenn Cooper, Lascaux Media, 2025,‎ 312 pages, $16.99 (Paperback), $5.99 (Ebook)

Time travel has been a fiction staple since Mark Twain’s “A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court.” A standard trope has a person from the future taking modern knowledge into the past.

“The Physician of Nineveh: A Time Travel Historical Fantasy of Ancient Mesopotamia, Forbidden Magic, and Love Across Time,” by Glenn Cooper turns this upside down. In it a time traveler from the past goes to the future in search of badly needed information.

Mannu-ki-Ashur is Chief Physician to King Ashurbanipal in 7th Century Assyria. The king’s favorite concubine, a woman Mannu has loved from afar since childhood is dying of an infection. He cannot cure her. He chooses to take a terrible chance. He uses forbidden magic, spells to take him to some point in the future where he can learn how to cure the woman and then return him to Nineveh.

The spell takes him to the 21st century. He arrives without clothes or any artifacts in the middle of downtown London; a place filled with strange monsters and people he is unable to communicate with. Streaking though London he is tazed, arrested and taken to a hospital for psychiatric evaluation.

Dr. Kate Mayne, a brilliant Assyriologist works at University College London. She is recovering from a broken love affair. A friend, a hospital nurse, sends Kate a cell phone photo of clay markings a lunatic streaker hospitalized there has made. Kate recognizes them as Assyrian cuneiform. She goes to the hospital to confront the fraud.

Mannu convinces Kate he is the real thing; a time traveler from the Ancient Assyria Kate studies. Intrigued and attracted, she joins his quest to find a cure, assisting his efforts. But there is a complication. Ashurbanipal’s chief eunuch wants the concubine dead.

Learning what Mannu has done, he sends two agents after Mannu, using the same forbidden magic. They are tasked with tracking him down and killing him. They arrive in the same condition as Mannu, but have a different reception. They are soon tracking him down using Assyrian rules of engagement.

“The Physician of Nineveh” offers fast-paced action mixed with light humor, in both ancient and modern times. Kate and Mannu find mutual attraction and common foes – again from both ancient and modern times. Cooper skillfully blends history, science, and magic to create a consistent story, contrasting modern and ancient values and ethics. The result is a delightfully entertaining tale.

Mark Lardas, an engineer, freelance writer, historian, and model-maker, lives in League City. His website is marklardas.com.

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Oooh this looks wonderful! Thanks @Seawriter !

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I think it was. Enjoyed it deeply. It is a one-off gem. I’ll look for future books by this author, but don’t see this as possibly having a sequel even one-tenth as good.

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Just a quick question, Seawriter. One of the unavoidable issues with time travel is the language gap, when languages are in continual flux (as Prof. McWhorter points out in his books & videos). It would have been a challenge for a modern English-speaker at the court of King Arthur.

Even for a modern trained Assyriologist, there would remain the difficult challenge of what the language recorded in cuneiform would have sounded like. Just out of interest, how did the author deal with the communication issue between the principals?

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Pretty much by highlighting the difficulty. They initially communicated using cuneiform, with her having him read aloud and mimicking his pronunciation after an initial attempt to talk to him in her version of Assyrian. Because of her training they were soon communicating.

With the other two it was different. They were collected by a petty criminal who had no clue where they came from. They learned to communicate with pointing to object and learning nouns, then verbs, then syntax. A lot of Me Tarzan, you Jane stuff, but plausible.

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Thanks for the explanation. That definitely is plausible as a way of overcoming the language gap. When an author is careful about those kinds of things, it certainly heightens my interest in reading the novel.

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..or, there’s always Douglas Adams’ Babelfish…..

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Finished this one and read another of Cooper’s , “The Fourth Prophecy”. Kinda Dan Brown-ish, but a page turner and a good exciting read. I’m going to Kindle up another of his. I have to have a novel going and was at a ‘tweener” , so thanks!

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