Enjoyed it - but not a quick read | The Seventh Scroll (A Novel of Ancient Egypt)

Another excellent Wilbur Smith novel | The Seventh Scroll (A Novel of Ancient Egypt) | Wilbur Smith

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	• The Seventh Scroll (A Novel of Ancient Egypt) Wilbur Smith St. Martin's Paperbacks, 2008 - 752 pages average customer review:based on 83 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

A Rip-snorten African Adventure

Your "helpful" votes are appreciated. I seem to have angered a Mormon over my negative reviews of books attempting to proof the Book of Mormon is an ancient document and not Joseph Smith's religious novel.

This person gives me a negative vote almost as soon as my reviews are posted. Oh, well. To be so threatened by the facts.

The plot of the "Seventh Scroll" grabbed me and wouldn't let go. A woman archaeologist and her husband find an Egyptian scroll that leads to the lost tomb of a pharaoh. The husband of Royan is murdered for the scroll, Royan escapes, and is soon aided by an Indiana Jones character named Nicholas. The wealthy Nicholas funds an expedition, and Nicholas and Royan head off to Ethiopia and find a lost tomb that had been ingeniously hidden by a river.

I don't want to give the story away, but I really got lost in this grand adventure. I had to overlook the fact that Smith referred to his previous novel "The River God" in this novel. That takes the reader out of the story, in my opinion. It sounded like an ad for "River God," and makes me less likely to read that novel.

Overall, it kept me turning the pages. If you haven't read "Cry Wolf," by Wilbur Smith, then you are in for another treat of an African adventure. An Indiana Jones character in the 1930s takes a convoy of armored cars into the Ethiopian highlands with the Italian army in hot pursuit.

We should all urge Hollywood to make these two novels into movies. We need some new takes on the Indiana Jones genre. Go for it, Hollywood!

Click here for Cry Wolf: Cry Wolf

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Enjoyed it - but not a quick read

Working in Ireland for nearly two months I picked this up in a second hand bookshop and figured it would keep me occupied for a week. Three days later I finished the book and was wondering why I'd not read anything by Wilbur before. He has a command of word that many authors don't and this book combines the thrill of finding an unknown tomb, a mystery, romance and treasure hunt. Not many men can write a good romance amid all the other action but this guy nailed it.

Another excellent Wilbur Smith novel

After reading River God I had to jump right back in to another great Wilbur Smith book. It ties in nicely with River God - both are excellent books although I enjoyed Rived God slightly more. Wilbur Smith's books are great I just wish I had time to read them all.

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This man can write!

Wilbur Smith is brilliant. You must read River God first, or you lose the effect of this book. He has done things which will surprise and delight you in this book. One the characters in this modern novel about people searching for the tomb of the hero of River God was the author himself and his book River God! I loved the fact that one of his characters, the beautiful and brilliant Egyptian/English archiologist was critical of how Smith portrayed the character of Taita, the slave genius. It adds an amusing twist to a story. You can imagine the author smirking as he wrote it.

The thing about Smith's books is a pure sense of adventure that captures you and makes you feel you've had the adventure as much as the character had. His violent scenes are startlingly brutal, almost beautifully so, but elegantly brief and non exploitive. I appreciate his restraint and cower at the terrifying depth of his imagination.

The only criticism I have is his use of language. The speech pattern is odd. I find it bothers me. Instead of saying "I'm coming" his characters say "I am coming." which sounds to, at least the N. American ear, stilted and odd. Perhaps its an English thing, maybe it's African, or maybe it's a product of his generation. But I wish he'd knock it off, it gets in the way when you have to stop and chew on a bit of dialog like that trying to "hear" it in your mind in a way that works yet failing and mentally having to change it to "I'm coming" in order to move on. Give it up, Wilbur. Like it or not, people don't speak that way!

I loved River God and hestitated to read a modern story when I wanted to linger in the past with Taita, but I'm so, so glad I did!

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Double-O Jones

In this sequel to "River God", Wilbur Smith leaps forward 4000 years to tell the story of archeologists, adventurists, and opportunists as they converge on the secret tombs of Pharaoh that Taita, the brilliant slave, constructed in Ethiopia during the exodus of that earlier story. The opportunities for continuity were enormous, but sadly, Smith does not develop these opportunities.

His main character is a refined British adventurer, a cross between James Bond and Indiana Jones, whom Smith endows with virtue and a cunning, clever mind, even though this character stalks an endangered species for the purpose of killing it as a trophy, and removes ancient Egyptian artifacts for later sale at auction. The female love interest is an Egyptologist who inexplicably looks past this behavior with adoring eyes. Woven throughout are mercenaries, insurgents, wealthy bad guys, and traitors: so many characters that "The Seventh Scroll" would have become a "War and Peace" of Africa had Smith fully developed these separate story lines. And then there is a backstory that is not fully described: the discovery of ancient scrolls in Egypt, the seventh of which alludes tantalizingly toward an undiscovered tomb that might contain enormous wealth. This story alone could have introduced the quest and the action in a satisfying continuation of the earlier story, yet Smith skips over this. Rubbing salt into the wound, Smith inserts himself and his book, "River God", into the story, as Clive Cussler does in the later Dirk Pitt novels. This gimmick collapses the suspension of disbelief to become annoying.

These are harsh words for the follow-up to a marvelously-written novel. "The Seventh Scroll" is readable as a light (although long-winded) adventure story, just wince at the corny dialog and wooden characters and focus instead upon those few connections to Taita that extend the story in "River God" just that little bit further.

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For 4,000 years, the lavish crypt of the Pharaoh Mamose has never been found...until the Seventh Scroll, a cryptic message written by he slave Taita, gives beautiful Egyptologist Royan Al Simma a tantalizing clue to its location.

But this is a treasure cache others would kill to possess. Only one step ahead of assassins, Royan runs for her life and into the arms of the only man she can trust, Sir Nicholas Quenton-Harper-a daring man who will stake his fortune and his life to join her hunt for the king's tomb. Together, they will embark on a breathtaking journey to the most exotic locale on earth, where the greatest mystery of ancient Egypt, a chilling danger and an explosive passion are waiting.

Steeped in ancient mystery, drama and action, The Seventh Scroll is a masterpiece from a storyteller at the height of his powers.

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