Appalling.Meet Taita, the lead character: writer, sculptor, painter, architect, engineer, surgeon, strategist, politician, warrior, athlete, historian, geographer, philosopher, mystic, philologist, adventurer, musician, chess player, veterinarian, actor, utterly handsome and wise beyond measure. He is also a caucasian 154 years old eunuch living in the ancient Egypt.He is a slave too, but he does and goes as he pleases."The Quest" starts with Taita going to a lama monastery in the middle of Dark Africa to get his inner eye opened. A nun does that by extracting Taita's right eye with a spoon and piercing his eye socket with a bamboo needle.Once the inner eye has been properly opened, Taita is able to enjoy a new set of mystic goodies like aura sighting and mind reading. He gets better too at astral traveling, concealment charms and dream interpretation.That's how he is able to get a very bad vibe: back at home, his chum, the Pharaoh of "that very" Egypt, is in trouble. The Nile has dried up, the country is afflicted by a number of horrible plagues and the queen has a crisis of faith.The enhanced Taita goes back and very soon realizes that the culprit of all these bad things is an evil sexy witch, thousands of years old, who lurks very far away, to the south of Egypt, close to a lake and a volcano. Right away Taita enlists a company of brave and insignificant men and down they go for country and king.On their way to the witches' lair Taita happens to find his future female companion: a blond child of 7 years of age. He knows in his heart that the girl is the reincarnation of his old flame, the only woman that he truly ever loved (platonically): queen Lostris of Egypt. He adopts the child and begins her education. She turns out to be exceedingly bright. They find out that the evil witch has an appetite for geniuses. That makes Taita the best possible prize. But there is a problem, the witch feeds on geniuses only through sexual intercourse, and that is just the only thing that Taita cannot do, being castrated and all. Never fear, Eos (that is the name of the witch) has a whole team of evil but highly skilled medical minions. They will be able to help Taita grow a penis (and new teeth too as a bonus). The operation consists of embedding pieces of slaughtered newborn babies in the right cavities of Taita's body and watching them grow.Once Taita has a penis, he gallantly goes into a genital confrontation with Eos. This turns to be a battle of epical proportions, but in the end Taita prevails because is one of the good guys. He literally fucks the evil Eos into oblivion. By doing so, he gets all her wicked but extensive knowledge of the world too, we are talking about thousands upon thousands of years worth of wisdom. Afterwards Taita doesn't stop for a smoke, no, using the memories of the witch he goes down to the basement in the volcano and finds the fountain of eternal youth, and there he takes a long and life changing shower.Behold Taita 2.0: a perfect mind of unmeasurable deepths within a perfect young body that will never grow old. He gets back, tenderly teach the blond little girl (that has turned sixteen in the meantime) how to make love, unblocks the Nile, obliterates the surviving minions of the evil Eos (black and brown alike), liberates all the good people and guides them back to "that very" Egypt of them in a merry river procession.I found the precedent three books bad but enjoyable. This one is just amazing. I have read it out of curiosity, how insane can it get? I do hope for the mental health of Mr. Smith that Taita is not his alter ego. I will read the next (and last one), just to assert whether this was just a crisis of sorts.One of the first books I truly loved was Sinuhe the egyptian by Mika Waltari. I wasn't expecting that when I started this series, but I wasn't expecting this either. Just one last thing, on the jacket of my edition of Sinuhe, the font size of Mika Waltari's name is much smaller than that of the title. Exactly the opposite applies to this book: the Quest, by Wilbur Smith. Bad things happen when people or fictional characters take themselves too seriously.
I don't remember how this book came into my possession. I think it might have been given to me by someone who knows about my love for ancient Egypt. Judging by my reactions to both this book and Lily of the Nile, I really dislike mixing my ancient Egypt with hoopla magical powers. Which is kinda funny considering my love for all things *woo*.Apparently this book is part of a series, which may be the source of some of my problems with it. There are all sorts of allusions to Taita's past and earlier adventures that I had no context for. Which is not to say that I was utterly lost all the way through; I'll say that for this book, it stands on its own as its own contained story. But oh gods I did not care. I didn't care at all about Taita, Fenn, any of the secondary or tertiary characters. I cared about Meren, because he was the closest character to my insatiable love for the muscled soldier protector type. And Eos was a pretty badass villain, though I don't think Smith handled her particularly deftly. I think I like her more in concept than in execution. But as for the rest? Did not care. At all. I was bored. I think a lot of that is because 98% of the plot is things happening to the characters. It's nearly all external action, and there's not much going on internally. I suppose Taita's issues with becoming a "true" man were internal struggle, but he mastered that so quickly that it didn't matter. I don't like stories where there's no internal character development, and that's what this was.I also really didn't buy the romance between Fenn and Taita. It struck me as the tale of Merlin and Nimue transplanted to Egypt, and that was really off-putting for me. It doesn't help that so much time goes by in this book; I lost track of how many years pass, but it's a lot. And that's not really alluded to with any clarity, so I got lost in terms of timeline.Overall, I'm not a fan of this one.
What do You think about The Quest (2007)?
I've enjoyed Wilbur Smith books for 25 years but this one will be my last. I only managed to read the whole thing because I was traveling and didn't have any good alternatives. Also, I couldn't quite believe how bad it was. The mystical elements, while out of place, were hardly the most jarring aspects of the story. I was able to accommodate the genre shift, but couldn't abide the predictability and juvenility of the storyline. The story reads like an old man's dirty fantasy of immortality. Where prior books in the sequence required genuine sacrifices of the main characters, this tale never asks the characters to make difficult choices. Moreover, sacrifices made in earlier books are undone and the main characters receive their every desire. Stories can, of course, end with the characters achieving their dreams and living "happily ever after," but in order to be dramatically satisfying, the characters always show evidence of personal growth and their dreams change as they mature. The characters in Wilbur Smith's Quest appear to do just the opposite... they devolve into children who, unfortunately, wield enough power to achieve their every want.
—Andrew
"Alle fonti del Nilo" è il quarto volume del bellissimo ed epico ciclo egizio di Wilbur Smith. I primi tre lavori sono stati alquanto meravigliosi e spettacolari, ma questo (purtroppo bisogna dirlo) mi ha profondamente deluso e lasciato con l'amaro in bocca... già a metà libro non vedevo l'ora di arrivare alla fine e, in più di un'occasione, sono stato lì lì per abbandonare il tutto! Intanto cominciamo col dire che moltissime situazioni (parecchio logorroiche) non avendo nulla a che fare con la storia principale, mi hanno dato l'impressione di essere state inserite solo ed esclusivamente con l'intento di "allungare il brodo". La figura di Taita, l'eunuco protagonista di tutto il ciclo egizio, da intelligente, sapiente ed esperto di svariate arti (medicina, matematica, architettura e letteratura su tutte), in questa storia quasi quasi assume le sembianze di una vera e propria "caricatura" del suo stesso personaggio, diventando un potente mago e, colmo dei colmi, un uomo "virile" nel momento in cui la sua principale nemica gli dona un nuovo "membro". Ma ci sono anche tante, troppe, situazioni su cui io avrei da ridire. Alcune di queste, inoltre, sembrano palesemente scopiazzate dalla Bibbia; giusto per fare un esempio, ne cito due: all'inizio del racconto abbiamo l'Egitto che è colpito da svariate piaghe e, nientepopodimeno, il personaggio di Fenn (reincarnazione della regina Lostris, coprotagonista del primo libro), come Mosè, viene ritrovata in una palude all'interno di una cesta a forma di barchetta. Forse l'unica cosa positiva dell'opera di Wilbur Smith è la magnifica descrizione dei paesaggi egizi ed africani (sembra davvero di sentire il fruscio delle foglie e l'impeto delle onde dei fiumi); ma, e concludo, ancora una volta c'è da dire che l'autore non lesina dettagli e descrizioni anche di minimi particolari nelle scene di violenza e sesso. E' un po' troppo, direi...
—Antonio Rosato
The Quest was everything I love about a book. Epic historical adventure story with well-defined good vs. evil characters of an interesting time (ancient Egypt) with fascinating characters, magic, mythology, intrigue, battles, and surprises, set against an unlikely journey. You follow the adventures of the wise Taita, an old magus (wise-man / teacher / magician) who has already lived the life span of 4 generations of Egyptians, as he is sent by the Pharoah to uncover why the Nile has dried-up by traveling to its source deep in the unexplored depths of Africa. With a loyal following of 100 men Taita faces every challenge the journey has to offer from the un-relenting desert heat to the poisonous flies of endless bamboo swamps, all while withstanding the mental battering from a powerful witch and exploring the presence of an un-known yet familiar presence on the ‘ether’ that seems to be guiding his steps.This is actually the 4th book in this Tiata series, which I did not know until after I had finished the book. You do not need to read the earlier stories to enjoy this book. However, after reading the reviews on GoodReads it sounds like this 4th book was the least favorite for most people. I will absolutely be picking up the rest of the series.
—Sean Wylie
