Raw and spellbinding.

Smiths writing has you screaming for a character and then feeling sick with despair. A dark, thrilling and melancholic tale of a fight for survival, revenge and power. The Ballantynes’ could have been as great as the Courtney’s. It’s a sign when you hate the author for what he does to the characters, that it is an exceptionally great narrative.

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Another winner

Once again Wilbur Smith smashes it with a compelling story. It is part of a series but could quite easily be a stand alone book as there is a background given to each of the main characters. His descriptive style and the excellent performance by Elliot Chapman brings the whole thing to life.

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Zimbabwe weeps now

I first visited the beautiful country of Zimbabwe in 1980 the year of independence. The people of all races were optimistic, joyful and eager to rebuild their country. I visited often until five years ago when I could no longer bear to see the poverty and despair that has followed due to successive cruel and corrupt governments.
This book is a pretty fair reflection of the birth of a country and how the greed of both black and white have formed it. The white to build using their knowledge and the labour of the blacks and the blacks to reduce it at dreadful cost to their tribes.

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gripping and emotional

full of history details and a gripping read definitely recommended for all even if you know nothing about the location or the era

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Marvelous story telling wicked stuff

Top notch, hot stuff! Excellent story line, great credible, bewildering characters, a worthwhile read and bewitching listen. A great piece of writing for anyone who likes historical fiction. Thank you and goodnight

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Excellent book

The story is excellent and take me back to bygone days. It is such a Hugh pity that the narrator didn’t do his research and kept miss pronouncing African place names on the book. It’s a shame that effort is made for French words but not African words

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Love Wilbur Smith

I loved the book, and found it made me sad. I was born there and know that much of it is based on facts. The narration spoilt it for me as the pronunciation of many of the Afrikaans words grated! I found myself shouting out correcting many times the word ‘kopje’ which is pronounced like ‘copy’. Matopos has the stress on the second syllable, not the first, so this also irritated me since both these words are used many times throughout the book. Elliot Chapman reads with a very English accent which didn’t sound great and his attempts at the Afrikaans and native accents were poor. It does spoil an otherwise great book. I will be listening to the next book with gritted teeth!

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Ugh!

Stuck it for 4 1/2 hours absolutely nothing happens ,life’s too short to stick it out for 20 hours

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not my genre

struggled to stay awake so stopped after 3 hours. my mistake for not checking the story before purchase - just went with the authors name.

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old fashioned

whilst I have always liked Wilbur Smith's books, I have stopped listening to this one as I am unhappy with the racist attitude of the characters. it maybe an accurate portrayal of the time the story is set in, but made me uncomfortable listening to it. I don't know whether my change of opinion is because this is written differently to his other novels or simply times have changed

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2 people found this helpful