Wilbur A. Smith (1933–2021)

Mungo St. John, AKA Sinclair, reveals his true character by never redeeming his early choice to work on a ship destined to Africa to load slaves for America.

He does not recoil from the hateful brutality, murders, and horror despite that Camilla, the true love of his life, was a slave owned by his father and originally intended to be inherited by him. For some inexplicable reason, revenge overpowers any compassion for the people of Africa.

From the start, the plot builds evil upon evil and show more undermines any hope for redemption or balance. Mungo's old Cambridge adversary, Fairchild, turns out to be the hero of the story. Having not read any of the other Mungo books, I have no idea if Fairchild figures in as challenger.

Very disappointing. show less

The novel opens in the 1870s in Natal - one of the colonial possessions of England in what will one day become South Africa. Sean and Garrick Courtney, the twin sons of one of the local ranch owners, spend their days hunting and playing under the hot sun. Until a tragedy strikes, Garrick loses his leg (due to his brother's negligence) and the relationship between them changes. Sean tries to make up for it, Garrick gets more and more bitter and manipulative.

And all that story unfolds while show more the world around them changes - they both end up in the Anglo-Zulu War - Garrick comes back a hero, Sean and their father are presumed dead. Until Sean comes back home to find his pregnant girlfriend Anna married to his brother and confirming the father's death. Had it been almost anyone in the world, that may have been the end of it but Anna wants a revenge for being forced to marry Garrick (because she believed Sean to be dead) so she spins a story and causes the two brothers to fall out permanently and Sean to leave, leaving all he owns to his unborn son.

And this is where the story really begins. While the Natal chapters are interesting and the war is tragic, they serve to set the scene for the future. Because Sean 's adventures are just beginning - he gets in the middle of the Witwatersrand golden fever, gets extremely wealthy and participates in the founding of Johannesburg, then have to run out of there after trusting the wrong people and ends up chasing ivory into the Bushveld, gets married, gets a child and then loses almost everything again when his two worlds meet for the first time. It is an adventure novel set in a place and time which is almost forgotten.

It is the story of Sean but it is also the story of the land that is to become South Africa - with all its beauty and weirdness, with the large open spaces and the wild animals, with the local tribes and the colonists - Dutch, English and Portuguese (and anyone else who shows up...). Sean's best friend may be white but his constant companion is Zulu and there is also a friendship there, albeit unconventional and looking almost insulting from our viewpoint - but both men respect each other and listen to each other and both learn from the other. There is a play on race and the changing in perceptions around it (and in how race is being used and abused at the colonies) - it is a world in flux where your yesterday's friend is an enemy tomorrow (the Boer war is coming soon) and your enemies may be the ones to save you next time.

And in counterpoint to Anna from the first part of the novel are the women of the later parts - Candy and Katrina - different as two women can be and yet, both of them hardworking in a men world. Their meeting ends up being the undoing of Sean's world - because none of them understand the other and neither Sean understand any of them.

The novel finishes almost where it started - with Sean looking back to Natal and deciding to go back home. It is a long novel and yet when it finished, I wanted more - Wilbur Smith is one of those storytellers that knows how to keep you interested. I am definitely planning to read more from Smith. show less

I don't mind trashy when it's fun, but Wilbur Smith's strangely incompetent Gold Mine isn't fun. On the face of it, it looks promisingly solid if unspectacular: a South African gold mine is overseen by a square-jawed heroic manager, while seedy corporate types scheme to contrive a site disaster that will give them a large payout. Clichéd stuff, and cliché can work well enough sometimes, but this book completely fails to deliver.

At first, this was just because of the OTT meatheadedness of show more the book. Our protagonist is Rod Ironsides (I'm already cringing…), a hypercompetent man's man irresistible to women ("those huge eyes swept over him. This was fairly standard reaction for any woman between the ages of sixteen and sixty viewing Rodney Ironsides for the first time, and Rodney accepted it gracefully" (pg. 23)). As with every other male character in the book, you can practically smell the beef, and there is a lot of ho-yay talk about "arms as muscular and sinuous as pythons" (pg. 55) and powerful bodies glistening with sweat.

The prose and dialogue both clumsily inform us about the men's prowess: Rod Ironsides is "Piston Rod" in bed, "powered by steam" (pg. 38), and Rod is told he is lucky "that neither the quickness and heat of your temper, nor the matching speed and temperature of your genitalia have gotten you into really serious trouble" (pg. 29). Women in public have to remain seated when he merely looks at them, lest "any moisture" show on their dress (pg. 78). They feel "bruised internally" after being with him (pg. 127) and end up breathlessly thanking him for being more than enough man for them (pg. 128). And that's before we get the constant slew of bosom-gazing, leg-gazing, bottom-slapping and hip-swaying – even when a woman is fleeing during an action scene, we are told she "ran with the full-hipped sway of the mature woman" (pg. 250). This is not a Millennial reaction from me, and I have little to no problem with the dinosaur stuff when done with a bit of charm or purpose. Like I said, if it was trashy and fun it would be OK, but it is incredibly gormless and I was embarrassed to be reading it. It's low-grade Mills & Boon for men.

But the real killer for the book is its complete flavourlessness. The mining stuff is overly technical without the bonus of being interesting or educational, and the corporate stock exchange subplot is both confusing (there are no names for its characters – only descriptors like 'the fat man') and interminably dull. The main plot with Rod Ironsides always seems to be building and then you realise the book's nearly finished and then it's gone, and it doesn't intersect with the corporate conspiracy stuff in any compelling way. Rod is sort of a bystander in his own story, and gets no resolution at the end. Add to this the inexplicable decision to end the book with Hettie. She is an improbably-written harpy-like floozy who gleefully cheats on her husband with his brother, feels elated when said brother is killed, then cheats on her husband again, and then feels elated when he gets killed too. The book ends with Hettie collecting a lot of insurance money for the deaths and walking off into the sunset, unrepentant. There is no reason at all for this. In a story this crude you at least expect resolution, for it to get the basics right. But Gold Mine can't even do that. It can't even reheat the old clichés competently, and it leaves a sour taste. show less

Rating: 4* of five

The Book Report: Second chronologically in the Courtney family saga, Monsoon covers Hal Courtney and his sons' efforts to end the scourge of piracy plaguing the East India Company, and their inexorable, inevitable removal from an England too small and too meager to hold the family's talents, abilities, and personalities, to a colonial future in the Cape Colony.

The multipolar world of southern and eastern Africa, its long-established power dynamics, and the astounding riches show more of India, south Asia, and Arabia, are all economically and still excitingly delineated by the Courtney family's arrival and conquest of and by this gigantic, extraordinary prize they seek. Their family dynamic, a violent and competitive and bitter one, is brought to several surprisingly exciting climaxes...it's not like one can't see the events coming, but Smith's ability to tell a tale is such that the inevitable feels like a shipwreck in progress.

After an amazing set of adventures in the clutches of people whose self-interest marches against the Courtneys', the family's future is firmly established and their connection to Africa becomes, by the dawn of the 18th Century, unbreakable.

My Review: Of all the Courtney family saga, this book reigns supreme in my affections. Hal's sons are a quarrelsome, angry, fascinating lot, and their well-roundedness makes even their worst traits and meanest actions feel real, comprehensible, and emotionally powerful.

I've read Wilbur Smith books since I was eleven, and I've only seldom felt let down. This book was not, in any way at all, a let-down. It was as violent as the monsoon it takes its name from, and still, like that monsoon, it gave life and comfort to its recipients. Powerfully imagined, powerfully written, passionate and real and engrossing. Don't miss it. show less