A Time to Die

This is another of Wilbur Smith's wonderful action efforts. "Time To Die" is a very enjoyable page turner. I found myself stealing from the office for an hour at a time to continue the adventure. His Sean Courtney character is better developed and more realistic than most other action-adventure protagonists. If you've never hunted, but you're curious about the hunter's mind-set, read this book. The insider view of late 20th century African politics is informative and revealing. Definitely worth 2 or 3 days. Great beach book.

This is #11 in the 13 Volume saga of the Courtney Family. It traces their history from the 18th century right up to the 1960's. I have read these novels several times over, and they never get boring. On the contrary I find their epic adventures to be more exciting and stimulating every time I read them. One of his reviewers writes 'Only a handful of 20th Century writers tantalize our senses as well as Smith" (Tulsa World). It's the truth.

It's no secret that I like Wilbur Smith and have read most of his books so I'm a little biased when it comes to writing this review. The guy knows how to write an always interesting adventure novel and maybe a little more than that since he writes great African politics and history, great edge of your proverbial seat thrillers, and reminds a lot of us how little we actually know of African policies and the kind of prejudice that has little to do with color but more often to do with historical and bitter tribal fueds, power grabs, and underlying economics. He also writes of great loyalties; something that few books offer up these days so it's five stars for A Time to Die for another great read.
Nicely done, Wilbur.

Another great (if slightly over the top) romp from Wilbur Smith. No doubt it, the men are men and the women are powerless to their neanderthal charms in Smith's stories. It is a well-paced, suspenseful story, with plenty of blood & guts for good measure.

I am a big fan of Wilbur Smith, but in my view this one was a bit overblown. The characters are barely two-dimensional, let alone authentic, and some of the dialogue is woefully corny (eg, from p249: `Oh God, Sean, my darling, now we are alive an in love, but by tonight we could both be dead. Take me now.).

The political subtext also made me pretty uneasy. The entire novel, set in late 1980s Zimbabwe and Mozambique, carries a subtext throughout about how post-colonial Africa is going to the dogs because the white man has been deposed and the black man is now turning it into one big cess-pit. Written and set in the latter stages of apartheid in South Africa, the real underlying message appears to be a defence of white minority rule in that country, and a warning of the civil war and anarchy that would break out in that country if the whites gave up their power as the world was pressuring them to do at the time. I understand that some out there may agree with Smith's views but I feel it is an insult to hundreds and thousands of genuine, intelligent, compassionate Africans out there who strive to install institutions of democracy and justice in their respective countries.

In addition, I found the frequent references to Matatu, Sean Courtney's diminutive bushman tracker, as like a "faithful dog" whose only pleasure in life is to make his master happy quite offensive and became increasingly frustrating.

In the end, the main storyline was entertaining, but the characters and dialogue rather cliched, but all in all a decent way to kill a lazy weekend if you are happy to shut your brain off and just enjoy the story. However, if you are sensitive about race issues you might want to read something else.

Wilbur Smith knows how to write a thrilling yarn, as his great success shows. In this page turner we have a sharp look at Southern Africa in the years prior to the book's publication in 1989. We in the new world can learn from the people who actually live in far away places. Too often we know little of other spots on the globe and that from a single view point. Smith is a refreshing blast of knowledge.
This makes the culmination of a long series of books about the Courtney clan, a series that began with the first Courtney story set in the 1600's. Sean Courtney is a white hunter in the grand tradition of his ilk. He operates in Zimbabwe, a nation that he fought hard to prevent from coming into existence. A great friend and long time safari customer from America engages his services. The resulting events involve a life and death race across the cone of Africa. We learn more than we needed to know about violence and savagery in the Africa of that time and place.
This fast paced, violent tale will keep you up late reading to the last page. Smith has heroic characters on a grand canvas that entertain us. And his villains are vile indeed.

While it was a compelling book and it redeems Sean Courtney, there is a lot of graphic violence. His characters are vivid. What shines in many book of the Courtney Families series is the loyalty and devotion of the African men who act as the right-hand man for Sean. They add color and admiration to the books.

Typical Wilbur Smith Africa. The last of the Courtney books, set 1987. A very good historical fiction read that should be read in context with Smith's other 12 Courtney Africa books. The content is rough and graphic and will be disturbing for many readers. I have read all 13 of the Courtney books and have found them all to highly entertaining and educational. For anyone interested in African history this is highly recommended.

I could not put this book down once I started it. It is fairly obvious from the beginning what is going to happen in the end. But the ride to get there is fun, exciting, surprising and thrilling.
There were many surprises that I didn't expect and setbacks that made the adventure all the more exciting.
I highly recommend this as a fun read.
- Bruce Raine, author of [[ASIN:B007BP9FP8 Attitude Determines Destiny]]

This is an interesting book of Africa, you learn about the land and the people there, but how many times can a person trick or be tricked by the same person? At the end of the book he left many things at the air, for example: you really don't know what happened with the hunt company of Sean Courtney and other things.

Wilbur Smith is a white African and probably the most productive and best-selling African writer of all time. His specialty is historical fiction and he writes in a way that ensures a reader will learn something about Smith's home continent with each book. It was for this more than any other reason that I ordered "A Time to Die" and eagerly looked forward to reading it.
I should have known from the unimaginative title that Wilbur Smith, despite everything good I've read about him and his books (I actually love the mid-60s film "Dark of the Sun" based on his novel with the same title), does, in fact, possess feet of clay. "A Time to Die" is not one of his best. It's a mediocre action suspense thriller that just goes on and on for 483 pages of story-telling implausibility and cartoonish cliff-hanging, plot twisting, puffery.
As such, it is probably about 200 pages too long.
The book starts out well.
Sean Courtney (part of the extended family that populates Smith's "Courtney" series of novels) is a South African veteran of the Rhodesian Bush War turned Safari hunting guide. He is taking an old friend, American Vietnam Veteran soldier turned multi-millionaire engineer, Colonel Ricardo Monterro, on what will be, unbeknownst to Courtney, Monterro's final hunt due to incurable brain cancer.
Now, I know what you are thinking: Spoiler Alert, right?
Trust me, the intrigue in this novel doesn't come from revelations like that, it comes from the insanely outlandish plot twists that will take this from what could have been a classic "Moby Dick" hunt tale to a bunch of other barely relatable story lines -- from a Cold War proxy war-story to a vendetta novel to a bush-craft survival story to a [fill in the blank]. It's three or four novels in one, including an unromantic romance novel because you know, with Monterro's lusty, nubile, uber-liberal American lawyer/native activist/animal rights defender daughter Claudia on board to ruin the hunt and attack everything the Colonel and Courtney both believe in, that eventually her and Courtney are going to fall in love and roll in the hay. Well, this is a 1980's mass market thriller so it happens -- and the eroticism always takes place in the weirdest places and at the most unlikely and inconvenient times.
What were people THINKING in the 80s?
Thankfully, the eroticism is limited. But the weird and altogether unnecessary graphic violence that dogs our couple as they flee from a former enemy of Courtney's from the bush wars is basically unnecessary to the plot and actually creates weird plot-holes that should have been avoided but which Wilbur Smith decides to try to fill with at least 30 extra pages per plot hole (example: the extended, multi-page graphic torture of a Russian mechanic to convince a Russian pilot to fly for the bad guys... and the replacement of that pilot on the next page with a Portuguese one and a throwaway sentence about the Russian pilot's untrustworthiness -- yeah, spoiler alert, right? There are multiple plot holes that get filled like this -- and I won't even hint at the flat way the book ends, oh, no. Suffer and learn for yourself).
The book is an exhausting read and our hero, Sean Courtney, never seems to sleep or eat despite superhuman acts of military heroism followed by erotic endurance sessions with the soft American babe who finds her inner strength when the reader discovers she is a natural ace at shooting the American Stinger missile (don't ask how THAT works into the story but it does).
Wilbur Smith is a good writer, but he simply takes three or four good novel ideas and throws them into the meat grinder hoping a magic sausage will come out. It's a sausage, alright, but neither magic nor digestible.
I am determined to read another Wilbur Smith novel because I have heard so many good things. But it will take me a few years to recover from this one.
I can't recommend it, unless you want an African eye view of the political situation in southern Africa at the end of the 80s. Wilbur Smith absolutely delivers on that.
The story is just a distraction.