Book Review: Assegai

Its been a few weeks since my last book review, and it's not that I have slowed down my reading per say but instead its that the latest book I read, Assegai by Wilbur Smith was one of those books I had a tough time getting through. For each book I read, I do read custom reviews, and the reviews for this book were varied all over the place from being great to being horrible. What interested me about Assegai was that the author Wilbur Smith had such a stellar track record and I had never read any of his work, so I figured I better give it a shot.

The book takes place leading up and to the start of World War 1 in British Africa. The story revolves around a british solider and his relationship with the African natives who are his biggest supporter throughout the novel. The first half of the book talks of the main characters war background and then his eventual transition into hunting. The last portion of this book brings up this rather unbelievable love story that has very little to do with the rest of the book. The ending is extremely underwhelming especially for such a well developed novel.

Overall I just never got into Assegai. It was excellently narrated, one of the best narrated books of teh year, it was just a shame that the book itself although beautifully written with great metaphors for life sprinkled throughout the novel, it ends up falling for short for what it could have been.