Hello Paul,

I've not read Wilbur Smith for years. Like so many 'Best Selling' authors he started turning out basically the same story over and over again. And then there was the padding that so many publishers seem to demand of their authors. You know the sort of thing; a 220 page novel pointlessly stretched to twice that (Clancy does that a lot).
I thoroughly enjoyed his debut novel (?) When The Lion Feeds and its sequel The Sound of Thunder.
If it helps answer your question any, the backgrounds to these two novels - the Zulu War and the Boer Wars - were fairly accurately portrayed.

Alex