The Quest |
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Wilbur Smith
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Pages: 624 (Hardcover)
ISBN: 1405005807
Pub: Macmillan
Pub date: 2007-04-06
Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 41451
Reader Reviews:
Don't bother (0/0 people found this helpful)
I love wilbur smith and i loved river god and warlock was good also so when The Quest came out i was eager to read it.
I was so disapointed despite my love of both the author and the re-invention of several of the charictors from warlock it was awfull and weak.
If you really want to read this then get it from a library don't spend money on it.
Awful (0/0 people found this helpful)
So disappointed. I loved River God, Seventh Scroll, and Warlock. Smith here departs entirely from what made those books such magnificent reads, and churns out instead nonsensical magic-heavy rubbish.
Let me say here that I do actually enjoy fantasy books, so it's not that I simply object to the new focus of this book. It's just that it's a badly written fantasy novel, with no redeeming features. It lacks the internal consistency essential for fantasy to work- new rules governing how the world works are fine, but if they are just made up as they go along through the book, there's no satisfaction to seeing how everythin pans out.
So- badly written, weak characters (bring back the Taita of old!), nonsense plot. Don't waste your money, whether a WS fan or a fantasy fan.
Not Wilbur Smith as I know him (2/2 people found this helpful)
What it wasn't is a Wilbur Smith in the style I have known for so many years.
Some of his books are gripping and some are not.
To me he started to slide with the Courtney/Balantyne sagas.
Gone were the stories woven around real events. He started giving me novels that just seemed to contain chunks of previous works.
Then came River God. Superb.
With The Quest we have the equivalent of Planet of The Apes 6 or Rocky 12 or Morse 22.
The names remain but that's all.
"Characters based on" as tv credits say
Yes I too was first struck (offended even) by the explicit sex within the first few pages. Not a good start I thought.
I found it hard to match the names/actions/attitudes to the characters of River God.
Then invisibility cloaks- oh come on Mr Smith.
I've been to Egypt, seen the fantastic sights, drunk deep of its' mysteries.
You can do better than that
So I suspended my pre conceptions and read it as a holiday or airport book.
As a time and space filler.
And it was... well, Nothing special!.
Even treating it as light reading I skipped pages- and don't feel I've missed anything
So buy it as a time filler but not as a Wilbur Smith novel and then, in my opinion, you won't feel cheated
This was dire (0/0 people found this helpful)
Did you ever read Hi Rider Haggard's Allan Quatermain, then watch the films and think just how how bad were they compared to the book!
Well this is similar, it's pure drivel compared to Smith's older African books and even the original Eygpt ones.
Rubbish (0/0 people found this helpful)
This has no merit, doesn't work as a thriller or a fantasy novel. No redeeming feature. Disappointing after all the WS greats.
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Categories
Amazon.co.uk places this book into the following categories:
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> Authors, A-Z -> S -> Smith, Wilbur
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> General
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> Contemporary Fiction: 1970 Onwards -> Popular Fiction
Books -> Subjects -> Fiction -> Historical
Books -> Special Features -> Regular Stores -> Favourites in Books
Books -> Refinements -> Language (feature_browse-bin) -> English
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Books -> Refinements -> Format (binding_browse-bin) -> Hardcover
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