Assegai

Courtney - Assegai, Book 1

By: Wilbur Smith

Narrated by: Sean Barrett

Length: 17 hrs and 45 mins

Publisher's summary

From directly overhead he heard the loud flapping of heavy wings, and another vulture rose from beyond the screen of banana plants. Leon felt the chill of dread. If the brutes are settling that means there's meat lying out there, dead meat.

King and country. No matter the cost.

With the backing of his uncle, General Penrod Ballantyne, young Leon Courtney joins the King's Rifles of Nairobi. When he becomes discouraged by the dishonesty of army life, his uncle recruits him for a special mission - spying on the Germans in East Africa, whom the General suspects are preparing for the Kaiser's war. Posing as a professional game hunter, Leon is tasked with gathering information on one of his clients, wealthy industrialist Otto Von Meerbach.

Leon finds himself falling for Von Meerbach's beautiful mistress but never forgets that his real mission is to destroy the enemy. But how easy will he find his task when his true enemy is closer to home than Leon ever expected?

A Courtney adventure - book 1 in the Assegai sequence.

©2009 Wilbur Smith (P)2018 Audible, Ltd

Awesome!

fantastic read! Wilbur Smith is a phenomenal writer! I love the historical context of the book! I would recommend it to anyone !

A good WS Tale

It is a treat to get more of our history, albeit a tad "embellished".Great story.

Excellent! Kept me up too late several nights

The story was excellent, listening to it late into the night and then over into the early hours of the morning caused me to be very tired the next day. Something I should not do, however, knowing something about Africa, the Rift Valley, and having a brother who has been on Safari four times makes me ready to follow along next year when he goes again. Understanding how life is here in America and hearing other’s experiences on Safari in the dark continent has me at least ready for the author’s next installment of adventures in Africa!

Headline (NOT optional it seems)...

A bit slower than the others in this series, but still an exciting epic adventure, with a wonderful performance.

Classic Wilbur Smith.

Sean Barrett is my favorite performer of the Smith books. Formulaic but well done. Entertaining and very enjoyable. I’ve read most of the other Smith books and wanted to revisit Africa.

wow what an awesome story

Seems as though Wilbur Smith's books not only get better chronologically, but they also become more meaningful to me.

Assegai offers special twists, moving from the traditional war and battle stories to hunting with a bang. Boy does Smith deliver. This is honestly one of the best hunting and African novels I have read. Painting vivid pictures of hunting's particular excitement, but the description if Africa and safari are clear, memorable and accurate.

Everything written brings back my memories. THANK YOU

ONE OF HIS BEST

I tried binge listening to Wilbur's various series but gave up after three because the soap operish quality of the storylines discouraged me. However of the three - and also in recollection of having read the same books years earlier - I think this is one of his best novels. It moves fast, contains real characters, doesn't limp along from one inevitable personal disaster to the next, and doesn't endlessly repeat the same formula.

Well narrated- many characters superb.

Bit too much violence but settings good. Liked the link to real events. Characters and history of the region. Made me go off and check a map.

Great writer, poor book

Wilbur Smith is a great writer with superb powers of description and an unmatched ability to bring a story to life.

I have read many of his books and really liked all of them. Unfortunately, this is the first one that I have not liked. There is no real plot to it until quite near the end, and it comprises a series of accounts of hunting expeditions involving characters that play no part in the development of the real plot interspersed with some rather syrupy Mills and Boon bodice ripper like passages.

It also fails badly in the area of realism containing some utterly implausible action as well as at least one significant and obvious anachronism.

When the plot finally does develop in the last couple of hours of the book, the action is so obviously contrived that it left me looking forward to the end of the book and, for the very first time reading one of Wilbur Smith books, contemplating giving up on it.

All that said, the way that the story is told has all of Wilbur Smith‘s usual qualities and, obviously, it hasn’t stopped other people reviewing here enjoying it. It also won’t put me off reading other books by this excellent author.