River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt by Wilbur Smith
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Book Reviews of River God: A Novel of Ancient Egypt
Book Review: Nicely paced adventure novel.
Summary: 3 Stars
Just know that I really enjoyed reading this book. My crique's tend to point out a book's weaknesses. Hopefully, I succeed in setting your expectations so that you can enjoy this book as well; maybe even be pleasantly surprised.
1st. Calling all librarians! Please shelve this book with other adventure novels, not in historical fiction. I don't know much about Egyptian history, but my gut tells me neither does Wilbur. If you are looking for historical fiction about an ancient civilization, I recommend Aztec over this one. Aztec has it's issues, but at least I came away from the novel feeling that I had gained a true understanding of the people, their culture, and way of life. With River God, I was hoping for the same. And, I got some. But in the end, I don't "know" the egyptians like I do the aztecs.
The character developement is good, but the action and pacing is close to perfect in my opinion. A couple hundred pages could have been trimmed. I guess what keeps me from singing high praise of this book is that I much preferred the first Wilbur Smith novel I read -- Birds of Prey. I'm not a pirate book kind of guy. And would much prefer to read about egyptians. But Birds of Prey was a superior story in every way. Better character development. Better scenery. Better action sequences. More adventure. Maybe less politics, but that would be it.
So, had I not read Jennings' "Aztec" or Smith's "Birds of Prey", the tone of this critique would accentuate my praise for the novel. Which I did enjoy. Very much. If you haven't read either of these, read River God, you'll love it!!!
Book Review: Ancient Egyptian Hunting Manual
Summary: 3 Stars
I guess I'm just not enough of a "manly man" to appreciate Mr. Smith's rapturous descriptions of slaughtering animals which abound in this otherwise very readable actioner set in the Egypt of the pharoahs. The novel starts out with a very long, detailed and gory account of a savage hippopotamus hunt. I managed to get through that only to encounter Smith being similiarly thrilled by his recounting of the massacre of an oryx herd. By the time we got to further technicolor exultations about the destruction of elephants to plunder their ivory - complete with horses being impaled on tusks - I gave up. Give me good old human-to-human cruelty any time, but please leave the Great White Hunter shtick out. This is essentially my only comment about this novel. Quite ordinary in conception and execution - not surprised it was big on the New York Times bestseller list. If you have a soft heart animal-wise (bleeding, some might say), do not subject yourself to the obviously delighted Mr. Smith's detailing of the gruesome destruction of wild animals. How many parts of a book can you skip over and still consider it a good read? Teddy Roosevelt I'm not. Please leave the carcasses and mounted antlers elsewhere. TYVMBook Review: Wilburrrrrrr!
Summary: 3 Stars
As an ancient history geek I had to suspend belief a little too often to get through this
book, which took me about 3 months to finish. I love Wilbur Smith, and treasure the Courtney
series as as the absolute best historical fiction I've ever read, but this thing.......
I don't know, maybe I just have a built in prejudice against pretty gay eunuchs with a 300 IQ
but as much as I wanted it to, this book just didn't do it for me.
Book Review: Story is ok, but actual book falling apart
Summary: 3 Stars
The story line of this book is ok, but the author does go into very long elaborations of details (which I am not crazy about). The book itself, however, is falling apart. As you turn the page, it falls out of the book.Book Review: River God
Summary: 2 Stars
I am a total addict for historical fiction. I plowed through all seven of Collen McCullough's one-thousand page each volumns of her Masters of Rome series without batting an eye. However, I was unable to make it past fifty pages of this book. Before one attempts to write an historical novel one should take at least one college class in the subject. This story might have made it had it been pitched as a sci-fi/fantasy thing-a-majig. But as an historical novel it was just too filled with anachronisms (some were total howlers) for me to be able to buy into the "fictional dream" and go with the story. I was also quite bothered by the first person narrator, so dreary in Historical fiction--especially when the narrator is the kingdom's number one expert in every subject imaginable. The only redeeming factor in this book was the excellent description, which is why I gave it two stars instead of one. But the bottom line is that there are too many other good books around for me to waste my time on this one.