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The BookViral Review:
A novel that embraces the bygone era of great historical adventures, Africa is a classy, intelligent read that’s literate and true-to-life and sure to grab the attention of discerning readers.
It is a novel with the courage to be about complex, sweeping emotions with Waldrip effectively using the alternate perspectives of disparate timelines to create a marvellously pacy, suspenseful read which is deceptively easy to become immersed in.
Waldrip’s compassion for his characters, warts and all, feels genuine. And his narrative, like his multiple plot threads, is a high-wire act that remains fascinating as they claim the emotional territory that is rightfully theirs. He has set out to make an epic, and Waldrip can’t be faulted for the many elements that succeed on this scale.
Africa has both dramatic flair and emotive involvement and through both Crixus and Laidlaw we not only come to completely understand our enduring fascination with Africa we are provided with a devastating portrait of a self-deceiving obsession that has led to the tragic extinction of considerable indigenous wildlife and the threat of more to come.
Through Crixus and Legio XVI Bestia Waldrip gives us an uncompromising vision of what Rome was really about as an empire without falling back on the kind of movie spectacle far too many historical novels about the Roman Empire seem to readily embrace. Crixus’ story, and that of Laidlaw, is detail-orientated and historically accurate, which are just two of the many reasons why Africa is so good but even in its darkest moments, and there are many of them, Waldrip doesn’t allow the tragedy of Africa to devour itself whilst remaining horrifyingly unrelenting in the story it tells.
The link between Crixus and Laidlaw is Crixus’ lost dagger and though tenuous it grounds both their stories in a needless vortex of ruin with both men trapped by the self-serving whims of powerful men and no saccharin endings for either.
An absolute masterpiece commensurate with novels by Wilbur Smith, Bernard Cornwell and Colin Falconer, Africa is an unreservedly recommended five-star read!
Fast-paced, and with as many twists and turns as a Mediterranean coast road, ‘How Long is a Mouse’s Tail’ weaves swiftly and captivatingly through an intricate plot, whilst the foremost murderous mystery keeps the reader guessing.
It is easy to analyze the mechanism of a good story but more often than not more difficult to explain why a select few are as moving as they are. Yet with The Breedlow Legacy, it’s not only the manner through which the characters are revealed to us but McNamara’s fascinating exploration of memory.
Pitching the rhetoric at just the right point between the believable and the unbelievable compels the reader to continue, and forces them to ponder on possible political realities of the future.
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