Customer Reviews

The Sunbird

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(8)

 

 

The Sunbird is written by the same author who wrote the highly-acclaimed The Seventh Scroll. And, as is the case with Smith's other novels, the story takes place in Africa. The first half of the novel covers the events in the lives of three people: a brilliant scholar, a wealthy businessman, and a young female understudy. The second half is an ingeniously told flashback through time and what might have been the previous or past lives that these same three have had many centuries ago.

There's plenty of adventure, politics, history, and romance in this novel. And, as always with Wilbur Smith, lots of violence. In some ways, Smith reminds me of the American author, Harry Crews. They both love to write about the primitive side of human nature. Plenty of violence, cruelty, greed, and injustice. Smith is different though, in that he is also a writer willing to put great beauty and passionate romance in his novels to balance out the ugly. One cannot read a Wilbur Smith novel and not yearn to visit the African continent.

In my opinion, The Sunbird is not quite as good as The Seventh Scroll. However, it is still a great reading experience and definitely better than most adventure novels out there.

By far my favorite of Wilbur Smith's books. The plot is a bit fanciful; a man who is scorned professionally as an archaeologist and who carries a chip on his hunchbacked shoulder, his beautiful assistant, his wealthy friend and patron who protects him, bankrolls him, steals his girl. The characters are not exactly innovative and fit well within Smith's genre types. However what makes this book worth repeated reading is the device of using two separated times starring the basically the same characterizations and scenes. The picture of a great ancient civilisation, its norms and culture, its history and glory and its ultimate tragedy is painted in bold confident brush strokes on the canvas of Africa. The descriptions are vivid, the imagination bold. One experiences the vignettes in the lives of Huy Ben Amon and Tanith as mush as Benjamin Kazin and Sally Benator. One rejoices as their lives take shape and love blooms, one mourns as they stumble towards the final tragedy. But moving as it is, the book is fatally flawed by Smith's overt use of it as an allegory for the battle fought by the blacks against the whites of Zimbabwe and South Africa. His sympathies with the latter are evident as he mourns the destruction of a system that though evil, is "better than its proposed replacement". A book to marvel at and enjoy, but beware of his hidden agenda.

I've recently re-read "The Sunbird" after many years, and found it just as terrific a read as ever. Without giving away any plot points, what got me the first time still gets me, the well-executed parallel stories, modern and ancient. The charge of racism voiced by several reviewers is perhaps understandable, but one has to keep in mind that the book was written at a time (the late 1960s) when the kinds of events described in the "modern" section of the story (tribal Africans taking up arms against descendants of white colonists) were common. I didn't find Timothy Mageba a one-dimensional caricature, but a complex and conflicted man who finds it necessary to sacrifice personal loyalties for what he believes is a larger good. Anyway, I don't want to make the book sound like a Poli Sci text, it's a fast, entertaining read, full of intrigue and romance, and eerie enough to make your hair stand up a little at times. Worth a read.

I am a huge Wilbur Smith fan. "River God" is the best novel I have ever read. Be sure you read "River God" before you read "Seventh Scroll". If you like "River God" and "Seventh Scroll" you will also love "The Sunbird". It is very similar in theme and is its own sequel in the fashion of "River God" and "Seventh Scroll". If you have read all the Wilbur Smith books like I have, you'll yearn for more, but it takes him years to come up with a new book these days. Now that many of his books are being reprinted, I am finding lots of fellow admirers of Mr. Smith. When you just can't wait for Wilbur to come up with another one, you might look at "Churchill's Gold" by James Follett. It is very similar in style and quality to most of the Courtney series.

This book has so much excitement and adventure packed
into it that in the hands of a lesser author it would have been
expanded into a trilogy. The vivid writing brings Africa alive:
the reader can feel the hot sun and the cool lake waters,
smell the dust and grasss, and hear calls of seabirds as
well as thunderous war chants and gunfire. I have probably
read it 20 times and have four separate editions of it, so I am a fan. Please keep in mind that it does have flaws, but
you will look long and far for a more exciting book ... if you ever find one.

The Sunbird I've read other reviewers who pan this book, calling it unrealistic and saying it promotes white supremacy. I can't disagree more. I am 66 years old & first read this book when it was a Readers Digest chosen book in the mid Seventies for book of the month club. I was in my thirties then and thought it magical and telling of a story that would be written just as the attitudes of the people were in the century the story would have happened. There is nothing racist intended. I have since read it about every three years, buying newer printed versions as it has come to be such a special book in my heart. I have all of Wilbur Smiths books but this is my favorite.

The Sunbird suggests an answer to the mystery "what happened to the defeated Carthaginians the Romans destroyed? It begins with two modern day archeologists excavating a newly discovered city in central Africa. The two are very dissimilar; one being a rich and gracious eccentric multi-millionaire who is funding the project, and his faithful henchman, a brilliant and very strong man who happens to be a hunchback.

The story begins in the modern day digs and as our heroes fall prey to traps that are left for grave robbers we jump back in time to these same two heros who are the two main leaders in a hidden city that was founded by the Carthaginians after they escaped the wrath of Rome. This city is hidden at the end of a river in the center of darkest Africa and tells the magical story - a "what if?" story that is part fictional history and part ancient legend come to life. It is full of action as it might have happened in that time and the struggles this ancient city went through in trying to survive.

The Sunbird lifts your spirit and excites your immagination. This was one of Wilbur Smith's first books and is more fiction than fact, whereas his writings of the past 20 some years have been based soundly on historical fact that is told in fictitious story to make it interesting. Like his current 4 books on ancient Egypt.

I strongly recommend it for all ages from the teens to "old folk" like me!

I have read this book twice only. My daughter has just reached the age where it would be appropriate for her and, while feeding her hunger for books, I remembered how good this book is. The second time I read it in a single sitting following a party where I didn't drink and I was waiting for everyone else to wake up. They woke, got on with the day and left me there reading. It is that gripping. It's a big book by the way, must be 8 hours or so of continuous reading. I loved the story device of having the same characters inhabit different bodies through the two parallel stories and hated finishing it. So now I'm going to buy another copy and read it again.

One of the reviewers here claims that 'The Sunbird' is racist in its essence and that W. Smith must have been more careful and write it 'impartially' as the 'Indiana Jones'. I will agree with the first part of this opinion and admit that somewhere I also got annoyed by the implications for the superiority of the 'whites' over the 'blacks'. However, I don't agree with the second part of this view: I prefer Smith writing according to his beliefs and not trying to be 'politically correct', even if that annoys the reader. Further, I believe that this book is so beautifully written and the above issues should only be viewed as secondary. The 'Sunbird' is a magical book that makes you want to read it again and again. Smith's writing is so natural and masterful at the same time that makes the 'Sunbird' an almost classic read. The characters (black and white) are given extremely well, especially Dr. Benjamin Kajin, and the plot always keeps the reader's attention without being predictable. I recommend the 'Sunbird' to everyone- whether you are a Smith fan or not.

I have a 1st edition of this book and have read it more than 10 times since the 70's. I wish I could articulate the impact this book has on me each time I read it - perhaps after the next reading! By the way- the cover on the current reprint, although taken from one of the events in the book, totally misrepresents the story line to any potential reader.

Edit note: The Kindle version is just appalling. Definitely the worst Kindle book I've seen. At times I couldn't figure out what was meant due to the extensive and frequent errors.
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"The Sunbird" is imaginative, robustly plotted, and has well-developed characters in exotic locales, with fast-paced action, and an interesting reworking of ancient history make this a terrific read if you can overlook the paternalistic "great white man" tone of the first half of the novel. African wildlife gets a pretty hard time of it as well what with all the great white hunters taking pot shots at them in the first half and the unlimited slaughter in the second half.

The first half of the book is really an elaborate set-up for the second half of the novel which packs an authentic emotive tale of friendship, love, war, and betrayal. The second half is set in an imagined Punic colony which considers itself civilized although it is wantonly cruel. It is a civilization that should not continue, yet the author makes it sympathetic through the focus on close relationships among the protagonists, each of whom mirror the protagonists in the 1972 world of the first half of the book.

The setting is somewhere in Botswana in the region of the Zambezi river in Africa of today, (1972 at time of original publication), and also as it might have been between the fall of Catharge, (146 BCE), to somewhere in the mid-5th century. There is a clever mirroring of ancient and modern characters that helps create suspense.

The Kindle version seems to have been scanned without benefit of correction. The price is the same as the paperback version (which is actually more expensive than the hardback) but at least the paperback does not contain thousands of typological errors. Often you have to figure out what is meant from context because the errors can be extensive. Apparently not even a basic spell check was run on this text after it was scanned. It is a pity that Amazon does not have some kind of quality control over text that it sells for its Kindle.