Book Review: The Triumph of the Sun by Wilbur Smith

My first Wilbur Smith book was an interesting experience. I’d heard mixed reviews for his works, but had an inclination to read The Triumph of the Sun because it dealt with the siege of Khartoum, which is a fairly important moment in British military history, and not for positive reasons, either.

General ‘Chinese’ Gordon and an Egyptian contingent are trapped in the city of Khartoum on the banks of the Nile, besieged by an army led by the Mahdi, a religious fanatic determined to crush the infidel at the earliest possible opportunity. Worse than that for the British general, his prime minister isn’t immediately of any real mind to send a giant relief column to his rescue, so the town, running low on food and morale, and stricken by all sorts of sickness – not to mention thievery, which Gordon deals with brutally – must try and survive.

David Benbrook is the consul general in Khartoum, and a fairly close ally of Gordon’s. His three daughters, Rebecca, Saffron and Amber, are getting a frightening look at the modern battlefield siege. Around them, British hero Captain Penrod Ballantyne and the slightly roguish and very charming merchant, another Brit, Ryder Courtney. The two men don’t get on particularly well, and things between them deteriorate when – yep, you guessed it – they both develop feelings for Rebecca Benbrook. Every good adventure book has a love triangle, right?

Smith is obviously enamoured with the continent and the era, for his descriptions of life in the desert are second-to-none, though they tend to somewhat overshadow the propulsion of the story, in a similar manner to how Tom Clancy’s exhaustive pages on how a particular weapon works can do the same. But when you get passed that, you realise that Smith has crafted a very good adventure/war novel, coming at the siege of Khartoum from all angles, and tying all his characters together nicely.

I was a little surprised when Khartoum fell in typically and expected ghastly fashion with still a good two hundred pages left, and even more surprised when the book, which, to that point, had dealt with only the time of the siege expanded and spread itself out over a number of years into the future. Months and months would lapse with seemingly each turn of the page. It felt like reading a second book (or a series of anecdotes), yet it was the same one, and I found it a little strange the way Smith had constructed the final third of what was otherwise a very engaging story, as long as you don’t mind plenty of violence and sexual situations.

Clearly, it was to ensure that the reader understood that Great Britain’s armies ended up triumphing. Lord Kitchener’s forces dealt the Mahdi a severe blow at the Battle of Omdurman, which went a long way to furthering Kitchener’s military fame, and Smith wrapped up the story soon after that – many years after it started.

The Triumph of the Sun was basically what I expected: a very descriptive story about the siege of Khartoum. I’m going to read Assegai at some stage, an African adventure set around the time of the First World War – again, because that period interests me – but the jury’s out as to whether I’ll read any more of Smith’s work.