The Triumph of the Sun, by Wilbur Smith

Maybe a year ago I saw this book somewhere—a thrift store most likely, but maybe a used book store. Several years ago I read 3 books by this author. They were sort of a series; they shared some of the main characters and the setting. But they probably would each have worked as stand-alone stories too. Anyway, this book wasn’t part of that series. But I figured if I liked those, I’d enjoy this one.

Well…

I’m about 35 pages from the end of this interminable book. Okay, clearly it’s not literally interminable. It will terminate in about 35 pages. But at times it has seemed never-ending. It’s a bit over 600 pages, and I think it could easily be 500 pages or less, and not really miss anything.

I started reading it last summer, but I put it down for a while a few hundred pages into it, but picked it back up two or three weeks ago. The overall story is interesting, but there are these long passages describing the tedious daily schedule with nothing significant to the story happening. That’s what was going on when I put it aside last year.

But now, toward the end, the author seems to have shifted into high gear. He’s giving us (the readers) a series of shorter scenes which each jump ahead by weeks or months. I think he’s trying to bring all the threads together, but has to cover a certain amount of calendar time within the story. I wish he’d done more of that throughout the book.

The fact that I’m taking time to write this instead of reading to get to the end of the thing just seems to show that I’m not “into” this book. And maybe the book isn’t as tedious to others as it is to me. Maybe my general sense of blah about my life is keeping me from getting involved with the book and from enjoying all the details. Who knows? The cover says Wilbur Smith is a “New York TimesBestselling Author” but it doesn’t say this is a bestselling book.

So, at this point I’m just pressing forward, trying to get to the end. I’d thought about putting it aside again a hundred or two pages ago. But I figured I’d be done with it soon enough. I was wrong. I’m tired of this book. But I shall finish it, perhaps today. And then I’ll read something that (I hope) is awesome. 

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UPDATE: about 2 hours later (12:30pm)

Okay, those 35 pages are done. I wasn’t any more impressed than I was when I wrote that bit earlier.

Right where I started back with the last 35 pages, there was a brief shift to a more historical narration than the author had used in the rest of the book, talking about the British Empire at the time (very late 1800s), politics, war, etc. And from there to the end the style was much quicker, like a synopsis, almost, of how the (presumably fictional) characters from the rest of the book fit into the actual history at that time, and ended up telling what happened to them later—in the Boer War and World War One.

So…I’m not going to be looking for another book by Wilbur Smith to read any time soon. Perhaps if someone I knew highly recommended a specific book by him, I’d consider it.

I think next, I’ll read some sci-fi.