A Falcon Flies - Wilbur Smith.
I find it very hard to believe that I have actually read two Wilbur Smith's back to back (including The Diamond Hunters) and found them way below par from his own standards. Just about very average story telling with not one character which I will cherish any longer than the time it took me to actually put the books back in my book rack. I guess either something is seriously wrong with Mr. Smith or with his fan in me :( who totally loved his previous works especially The River God series which I am yet to read completely). And it is terribly upsetting for me to not to like a book in the first place which I picked up to love big time. 700 pages which were supposed to be super fun with awesome premise of two brother sister of African origin going back to their country in search of not only their lost father but also some treasures. Initial 50 pages made me assume it will be as much fun as McKenna's Gold or something of Indiana Jones type adventure. It could have been an out and out adventure on Atlantic Ocean while the pirates are being chased by British naval fleet to discover what they hide below the decks of their super awesome ships. And on top of that imagine this all happening around the same time while Indian mutiny runs in the background. The whole idea, concept and plot had so much of scope yet Wilbur Smith's prose does no justice to it in totality hence derailing the fun but as I am a huge fan of his works, I somehow plough through to the end as I didn't want to add any of his works to show up in my super short list of abandoned books.
The whole story revolves around two important characters Zouga Ballantine and his beautiful sister (a Doctor) Robyn. Both have their own agenda of visiting their country of origin. Zouga is in search of his lost father and his treasures (you can a wild guess as what could be in the treasure around mid 19th century) and his sister Robyn is looking out to uncover the story behind the American pirate who is smuggling slaves from Africa to America (of-course illegally) and tends to write a book on the same too. They get a little help from another important character in the form of Clinton Codrington, a captain in British Naval Force who in the first place has the same agenda of capturing the dreaded pirate. Another thing which was totally against my taste was the killing of animals with super gory details, of-course that was the case some 100 years ago in the name of man's adventure but reading all that now was totally heart-breaking. And last but not the least, the love triangle too wasn't so convincing for me and I found it pretty much forced unnecessarily and even the final out-come wasn't something that I would agree on. All in all, this was almost the first disastrous experience for me from Wilbur Smith as I guess I have huge expectations whenever I see that name with letters on the top of any book. Next time onward, I will keep my expectations in the right place to make it a little easy on me and see if that works. Till then, do let me know if there a Wilbur Smith book which didn't work for you :) I would love to know that now.
And having said all that, I am sort of ready for brick-bats too from Wilbur fans :) and I will go back to at least two Stephen King books back to back now to pull me out of depression. King in my thinking can never go wrong. Looking forward to starting Four Past Midnight and Bag of Bones :).
