Customer Reviews

The Triumph of the Sun

5 star:		(26)
4 star:		(11)
3 star:		(12)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

Once again Wilbur Smith confirms his mastery of meticulous historical research coupled with a good old fashioned 'rip-roaring' yarn!
As with his dozens of other tales that span the history of his of his fictional Courtney family, this tale keeps the reader literally on the edge of their seat throughout all 500 plus pages.
As with the other superb books which track over four centuries of the lives, loves and struggles the Courtney clan, Triumph of the Sun is set against the sprawling backdrop of Africa.
This novel covers the adventures of Ryder Courtney and pits him against the fanatical Mahdi and the infamous dervish troops during the long siege of Khartoum defended by the legendary British General Gordon.
In this novel however Courtney's heroics almost pale in comparison to a member of the other fictional family of Smith's African saga's, Captain Penrod Ballantyne.
Ballentyne plays the role of the handsome, dashing, fearless young British officer that was most typified in the swashbuckling films of the 30' and 40's, by Errol Flynn.
The almost Hollywood style love interest is supplied by the beautiful teenage daughter of the British consul general, Rebecca Benbrook. In a neat little package that would have done a Hollywood director proud, Smith also manages to throw two preteen younger sisters, Saffron and Amber, into the mix as well.
As the story weaves in and out to cover the long years of the siege and battles, Smith cleverly develops the pair of young sisters into love interests as we watch them grow up under the most adverse but exciting of conditions.
In the hands of a lesser author, this tale of dashing hero's and winsome maidens in peril could have turned into a hackneyed 'Saturday matinee' of a novel.
But Smith is a master when it come to the historical saga. And although both Ryder and Penrod make escapes from certain death, survive fiendish tortures and rescue fair maidens, Smith spices the mix with liberal doses of really good history and cunningly woven and often shocking detail, so that the reader is truly caught up in the adventure and never bored.
As a matter of fact there is one incident when Penrod is held captive by a dervish prince, who suspects him of treachery, where I actually find myself getting choked up. The dervish decides to expose Perod by torturing in the most gruesome manner imaginable, a poor little slave girl that Penrod has befriended.
For the rest of the novel, I perused the pages with a vengeance, waiting for Penrod to even the score by plunging a saber into the dervish's guts!
It is a powerful writer who can evoke that sort of emotion in a reader, and Smith never disappoints.
I heartily recommend Triumph of the Sun as yet another in Wilbur Smith's long list of triumph's.

Richard S. Wasley "Ric - Author - Shadow of Innocence - coming January 2007 from Kunati" (Boston, MA USA)

I am an avid reader of Wilbur Smith and have read all his novels. To me he has been an excellent story teller. But this novel is among his worst if not the worst he has written. Among the many flaws are poor character development, improbable plot twists and gratuitous sex scenes that lend little if anything to the story. He, his editors and publishers let us down on this one. It is not worth the hardback price, or even the paperback price. Wait until it comes to your local library. In the meantime you are not missing a thing. What a disappointment to loyal fans who have in the past revered most of his works.

Having finished this novel, I have now read all of Wilbur Smith thirty novels and I must say that the man never strays far from what made us start reading him in the first place. His novels are not for the faint of heart as there is considerable cruelty in them, both with animals and our fellow man, but that is the way things happened during the times he writes about. There are also some fairly graphic sexual accounts. If that is not your cup of tea, you had probably better find a different author. However, Smith in his books always follows the thread of history in whatever part of the African continent he is writing about and gives life and color to a part of the world that many of us know too little about. This book is set basically in The Sudan and brings to life the seige of Khartoum and it's aftermath in a most interesting and realistic way. As in many of his books, a Ballantyne and a Courtney are prominently featured along with many other characters from both history and Mr. Smith's most fertile mind. My only criticisim of the book is that with 50 or so pages to go I was looking forward to the sequel. Alas, that is not to be. However, the story is vintage Wilbur Smith and if he is someone you enjoy reading, this novel will not change that.

I can modestly claim to understand Mr. Smith's style for storytelling, considering I have followed his books written in the 60s through today. I immensely enjoyed the earlier books - Shout at the Devil, Hungry as the sea, Goldmine, Cry Wolf etc.

Lately Smith seems to have lost his touch for the exotic and has become more mainstream. Triumph of the Sun displays his usual brilliance in the beginning - however the latter half dissolves into a standard formulaic action adventure you get to see from Hollywood only too frequently.

Smith also seems to have stopped trying to keep his characters in, well character. Case in point, our female protagonist, Rebecca Penbrook, a vestal virgin, seems to degenerate into a slutty tramp as the story unfolds. I was particularly put off by her carnal 'awakening' with the creepy villain after her capture. While I applaud Mr. Smith's confidence in his deep insights into the female sexual psyche, I seriously doubt if a woman whose family has just been massacred, can forget all that with a quick roll in the sack, which is what our dear Rebecca seems to do. Also, if we wanted a detailed description of what Rebecca does to and with the villain in bed, we would be reading the Penthouse forums instead.

I am waiting for a book with the classic Smith staple of elephant hunts, roaring lions and crocodiles in the Zambezi.

I have read all of the family of books and this is the weakest. Poor character development, minimal suspence in the story line and the ending seems to be that Wilbur got tired and stopped writing. No where near the quality of the earlier stories.

I agree with most of the reviewers , this is certainly a very pathetic work of literature by an author that i have always held in high esteem . I have read and reread every one his previous books , but never felt so badly as this one .
this book failed to evoke any excitement , a lot of the outcome seem to have been a foregone conclusion . there really was no great climax and the surprises were really nasty ones .

I dont think this book will endear this author to his demanding readers .

Something got lost in the desert.....I think it was the plot.

It started slowly, then started throwing knock-out punches left, right and centre, and then just wandered out into the desert and keeled over. Thus was Wilbur Smith's `Triumph of the Sun'.

Having read probably 80% of what Smith has published, I can confidently say that he can do (and has done) so much better. While he produces the regular menu of sex, violence and derring-do, we have too many protagonists and not enough storyline to keep them all involved. Part of the problem was probably the decade or so between the sack of Khartoum by the Mahdi and the eventual re-occupation of the Sudan by the British-Egyptian forces. We are treated to a pretty intense build-up of suspense with the siege of Khartoum, including getting to know the characters to the point where we can care what happens to them, and then when the main event happens half way through the book, everything seems to hit fast forward and we see only highlights of the next ten years or so, including huge chunks of the book where one of the key characters (Ryder, Penrod and Rebecca) have no role to play. In the end, it is all very predictable, except the mood and the characters kind of just run out of puff and fall over the finish line.

I would not say that this is a bad book at all. In fact I have found it interesting, entertaining, and it has piqued my interest in the Mahdist rebellion and colonial Sudan. Having said that, it seems the stories of the Courtneys and the Ballantynes (unless more prequels are added) have pretty much run their race. Hopefully the next Wilbur Smith will be a more original offering.

I consider Wilbur Smith as Africa's all time best writer or novelist. The Triumph of the Sun just goes to add to the accolades from his other bestselling novels. This great historical fiction is set in The Sudans when it was gripped by the rebellion against the ruling Egyptian Khedive and the British by The Madhi or "Expected One" who in 1881 deemed himself a religious prophet who Allah had chosen to purify the Islamic faith, a rebellion which saw the creation of a vast Islamic state from the Red Sea to Central Africa by preaching the omnipotence of the Qur'an, utilizing internal class struggles, and by successfully organizing his "ansar" or military.
Against the backdrop of the Mahdi's war that led to the capture of the Khartoum, the death of General Charles George Gordon and the temporary loss of British influence, are the figures from the Courtney and the Ballantyne families that featured in Wilbur Smith's other books, amazing characters that gave the historical fiction that spice that made this story so great.

To have a better feel of the story, I suggest you also read Wilbur Smith's other books such as "When the Lion Feeds", "Blue Horizon" etc. One thing I am sure is that whether this is your first Wilbur Smith novel or just another, you are certainly going to enjoy the story. Just like in Triple Agent, Double Cross, the message in this novel resonates today.

This was your normal Smith novel storyline that any who have read the majority of his work enjoys, however, I think it needed about 200 to 300 more pages to equal any of his better novels. About two thirds of the way through the adventure he started rushing as if he were trying to make a deadline or something. Even if it was a not to bad finish, I felt that there was much more that could be told to have made it a lot better read.

I have been a great fan of Wilbur Smith for many years and own and have read all is previous books with great captivation.

In "The Triumph of the Sun" I find that his plot moves forward ponderously slowly and becomes a real effort to read. I must confess I read about half the book and it is still lying incomplete and hopefully will get through the rest one day soon. This is so much in contrast to many of his previous books which I found so exciting and hard to put down, often burning the midnight oil to get to the end.