Assegai
Robert Conroy – Library Journal
The world is on the brink of World War I in Smith's epic of the Dark Continent. Big-game hunter and British army reserve officer Leon Courtney (of the Courtney family, last depicted by Smith in The Triumph of the Sun) also spies for the British in this graphic, colorful, and vivid novel of intrigue, romance, and violence. In short, Smith is up to his usual exciting stuff. A brutish German nobleman, Count von Meerbach plans to incite hard-line Boers to rebel against England; Courtney tries to stop it and, along the way, falls in love with Meerbach's beautiful mistress, who is also more than she appears to be. Africa in 1913 was a cruel and often brutal land but one of exquisite beauty, and Smith describes it in great detail. He is deeply sympathetic to the native peoples and their dealings with Europeans. Although sometimes overly florid when it comes to the language of romance, Smith here delivers for fans of good, action-filled historical fiction.