River God - Hardcover

Smith, Wilbur A.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0312106122 ISBN 13: 9780312106126

Publisher: St Martin's Press, 1994

Synopsis

A sprawling recreation of the grandeur of ancient Egypt follows the fortunes of the clever and scheming eunuch Taita; the beautiful Lostris, a lord's daughter; and Tanus, an ambitious soldier. 150,000 first printing. $150,000 ad/promo.

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Reviews

A bestselling writer in England but not as yet well-known here, Smith ( Elephant Song ) may attract a wider audience with this compulsively readable historical novel based on the little-known facts behind the Hyksos invasion of Egypt, circa 1780 B.C. Containing all the standard elements of great adventure--intrigue, romance, greed, cruelty and furious action--the yarn is spun by the clever eunuch Taita, who reports on events with an irony akin to a 20th-century sensibility. Taita is the slave of Egypt's scheming Grand Vizier Lord Intef, whose daughter Lostris is in love with Tanus, a young army officer whose father's demise was brought about by Intef's greed. Knowing of his daughter's love, Intef devises a plan for her to become the bride of Pharaoh Mamose. These maneuvers set the stage for the story of two warring Nile kingdoms, the arrival of the Hyksos and the ultimate exodus of the Egyptian court, now ruled by Queen Lostris. Taita is a curious creation. We know that he is clever and wise, but we don't know how he became so learned or what his country of origin is. The brilliant slave invented a system for calculating the rise and ebb of the Nile, is extremely knowledgeable in the ways of healing, improves upon the wheel and trains horses (both of which were brought to Egypt by the invading Hyksos). He is also clever enough to manipulate the Pharaoh into believing that he is the father of Prince Regent Memnon, the offspring of a forbidden tryst between Lostris and Tanus. Somehow, this doesn't ring true. At times the prose is curiously flat and juvenile (it could be Everyday Life In Ancient Egypt), but the events covered in this narrative have enough intrinsic interest to sustain the reader through to the rewarding and satisfying conclusion. An author's afterword claims that this is a rewritten version of scrolls discovered in a tomb newly opened in 1988. 150,000 first printing; $150,000 ad/promo.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Smith's 23rd doorstopper--nearly all of them about South Africa (Elephant Song, Golden Fox, etc.)--gallops swiftly through the action and flying blood his fans have come to relish, though for the first time Smith sets his story in Egypt 2,000 years before Christ. Readers hoping for descriptive riches on the order of Norman Mailer's Ancient Evenings will quickly find their hopes flattened by the banal style and fountaining clich‚s here, which give only a faint sense of the domestic particulars of daily life in those days, and will haave to satisfy themselves with Smith's sheer storytelling. At the start, Smith's narrator is the 30-year-old eunuch Taita, chief slave of Lostris, the 14-year-old daughter of Lord Intef. Lostris's breasts are ``the size and shape of ripe figs just ready for plucking, and tipped with rose garnets,'' while she has ``the neatest, tightest pair of buttocks in all Egypt.'' Lostris is beloved of young warrior Tanus, whose bow is so stiff only he can draw it and then loose three arrows before the first has landed. These matters once in place, the story will spread over three decades, during which Taita, Tanus, and Lostris put up with the machinations of her father, My Lord Intef, who is Grand Vizier; Lostris marries the Pharaoh; Tanus becomes supreme commander of the armies and battles the Hyksos invaders; he and Lostris have a moment of madness in the tombs of Tras as Tanus sires Memnon; the Pharaoh dies in battle, Lostris becomes queen, Tanus loses a major battle against the Hyksos and then his life to the magical blue sword that can pierce any soft bronze sword or shield; Memnon becomes pharaoh and Lostris dies. Brightly colored, sweeping escapism. (First printing of 150,000) -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Smith is a consistently popular writer, and his latest endeavor has considerable publicity push behind it. In other words, expect high demand. He goes fictionally where Norman Mailer, in Ancient Evenings (1983), went before: pharaonic Egypt. But he ventures forth into this world with less demanding results; it's simply easier for the reader to fathom Smith's re-creation than Mailer's, because it's less mystical, less detailed, more concrete. That's not to say, though, that Smith has not done his homework as he tells the story of Taita the eunuch, slave to a noble's daughter. Taita narrates the dramatic events of which he was either witness or participant as his mistress receives the dubious honor of marriage to the pharaoh. The brutality of life in ancient times is everywhere evident in Taita's tale, which involves fatal intrigue at every turn. It's clear Smith knows his subject: his graphic depiction of lust, bloodletting, politics, and, in Taita's case, honor is firmly grounded in rich details that evoke the period. Brad Hooper

Smith, whose 23 adventure yarns have sold more than 50 million copies, sets his most recent epic in civil war-torn ancient Egypt. The first print run is 150,000 copies.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: St Martin's Press
• Publication date: 1994
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0312106122
• ISBN 13: 9780312106126
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 530