Wilbur Smith excels in this kind of storytelling and, most important, in creating likable characters and detestable villains.

yours isn't the stuff of literary legend, but usually you buckle a *mean* swash and cause images of Erroll Flynn to dash around your reader's head (thanks for that, BTW). Sir Francis Courteney and his son Hal attack ships of the Dutch East India Company off the coast of Africa. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behaviour or unique IDs on this site. It’s fast paced and exciting and what it lacks in finesse it more than makes up for with sheer entertainment. Although the land and its sweet rivers lay less than half a day’s sailing away, Sir Francis had not dared detach even one of the pinnaces to fill the casks.Now Sir Francis frowned darkly as he listened to his men exchange insults with those of the Buzzard but, as he could not have half the ship’s company flogged to signal his disapproval, he held his tongue until he was in easy hail of the frigate.

All of the good stuff that historical fiction lovers like is here; lots of period detail, sightseeing, larger-than-life characters, historical context, and so on and so forth. I’m very intrigued as to Hal’s further adventures but I’ve also heard from multiple sources that Smith’s Ancient Egypt epic River God is great stuff as well.Nothing original in this story; it’s effectively the first Courtney book set in an earlier time with a dominant patriarch, a faithful black servant and a young pup learning the ropes along with a bunch of bad guys doing very nasty things and women whose principal role is to add some sex interest. Sir Francis picked out the shape of the Buzzard’s ship, black against the darkling sky, and raised the slender brass tube of the telescope to his eye. Smith's books generally follow the same formula, but his mixture of history, setting, and action really works.

It is 1884, and in the Sudan, decades of brutal misgovernment by the ruling Egyptian Khedive in Cairo precipitates a bloody rebellion and Holy War.At this age his beauty was still almost feminine, and after more than four months at sea – six since they had laid eyes on a woman – some, whose fancy lay in that direction, watched him lasciviously. You’d think that Wilbur Smith, himself, sailed the high seas in the 17th Century, such is his brilliant depiction of those days. It is a prequel to the Courtney saga and follows the fortunes of Hal Courtney and is set in the 1660’s.

Yet again i love Smiths ability to paint pictures of Africa in his words, and create complex characters.An exotic setting--the east coast of 17th century Africa, a young, handsome, brave, bright hero under the tutelage of his strict but loving father with a loyal, strong, brave, wise indigenous side-kick, naval battles, sword fights, lions, crocodiles, hidden treasure, a secret society, an evil, implacable but honorable foe, a couple of slimy bad guys, a beautiful, high-born nymphomaniac to relieve our hero of his virginity—what could go wrong? The lion is Sean, hero of this tremendous drama of the men who took possession of South Africa in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. This is a seafaring quest around Africa; Sir Francis, the Captain, is captured and tortured by the Dutch.