This took me about 2 weeks to get through and most of it was because of the first entire half of the book. I'm not sure why the author did this, but it was very distracting that the tenses and point of view kept constantly changing. In addition, I don't recall the author saying she would do this, but I also don't know why she insists to the very end to not append "BC" or "BCE" or at least "AD" to the years in which events occurred. Although she did do SOME jumping around in chronology, it took me a while to finally realize what she was doing. Why?? I wasn't sure of the exact time in which these figures lived, so I had to double-check that indeed Cleopatra VII lived from around 69BCE to 30 BCE.<br/><br/>In relation to the changing of tenses and POV, I'm going to guess the author was having to fill a lot of holes in the historical record early in Cleopatra's life due to little to no records before she became heavily involved with the Romans. However, the way she wrote it seems like she couldn't figure out whether to write it straight as biographical non-fiction or go full-on Philippa Gregory "historical" fiction. The second half greatly improved and probably because primary sources for that time period do as well. That's when the story really picked up and really became interesting as Cleopatra matured as a person and a ruler.<br/><br/>As for the figure herself, anything written about her, as even Schiff admits, is suspect. Her story is primarily written by the Romans, her conquerors and men who for one reason or another all seemed to have some sort of axe to grind. Not that an autocrat of any sort is above reproach by their very nature, but it seems all those who had something to write about her railed at her for doing all of the things they themselves and many another male autocrat had done before and certainly have done since. The apparent reason for which she was finally taken down seems to be summarized as not that she actually had any designs on taking over the Roman Empire as she was accused, but just the fact that she controlled such a large swath of land and its riches/resources and, I guess, showed them up for how well she managed them (even!) for them.<br/><br/>Overall, I gave this three stars because I split the difference. If I hadn't soldiered on through that first half I would've given it a 2 and the second half I think is worth a 3 or 4.