While I did enjoy it, not a lot of the Twentieth Wife stuck with me. It was a decent historical fiction about the rise of Mehunrissa through her marriage to Jahangir, Emperor of the 15th century Moghul Empire. It’s perhaps the result of our history, but it seems like most historical fiction marketed to women are about the political maneuvering of a woman working her way through a harem, a sea of ladies in waiting, or a royal court of some sort and attaching herself to the most powerful man in the room. These books always follow the woman who captures the eye and later the heart and mind of a king, emperor, or pharaoh, and in turn captures a kind of power that is rarely ever possible for a woman at that point in history. More…