This is the first Wilbur Smith book I read and will probably be the last. It begins with graphic sex descriptions, which I do not really care for, and then goes into a completely predictable and boring plot that is the stuff of a cheap action movie. By the 200th page (about when the rescue had been achieved), I already knew the ending. The plot follows a too simple formula: heroine needs hero to save her daughter, heroine falls in love with hero, hero saves daughter (but does not kill the snake), they all go off to live in la la land, then snake bites back, finally hero kills snake. There, I just saved you 400 pages worth of reading. I knew all of this after the first 200 pages that were torture to get through.