Alice Hoffman brought me back in time and I enjoyed learning about what life was like in 70 C.E. The writing was beautiful and at times poetic. I like my poetry in short doses though and after two hundred pages of lyrical prose I was ready to move on with the story. I liked the book, in fact I was swept away in the lives of the brave women it was about. Revka, Aziza, Shirah and Yael were strong women who lived amazing lives and were the only survivors of the Masada massacre. Unfortunately, the parts of the story that I first found to be so interesting started to bore me. The amount of detail the author put into describing religious beliefs and rituals made the story drag. I felt like I only needed to read about the steps to prepare one's body for death only once. Instead, the author felt like she had to pound the information into my skull again and again. After a while that is how I felt.... like the author was pounding me upside the head with her overly written book. Death by poetry. I started to skim over the pages looking for the meat of the story till I found the end. I'm glad I finished it. 
 Pictures I found relating to the story: 
 Masada 
 The ramp the Romans built to Masada 
 Character Casting: 
 Yael: Emma Stone 
 Revka: Helen Hunt 
 Aziza: Kiera Knightly 
 Shirah:Catherin Zeta Jones