This is the most engaged I've been by a Niccolo book so far. I really enjoy Gelis and Diniz and Loppe (and Umar). Of course, having read Dunnett before, that meant I was waiting for something terrible to happen to at least one of them by the end of the book.
This is a travel story, and while I am still a little hazy on Nicholas and what he wants and why he does the things he does, I enjoyed the travel through Africa. I thought it was handled incredibly well, especially given when this book was written. African cultures were treated with the same respect and awe that Trebizond or Cyprus were in previous books, and while the characters occasionally judged the culture of Timbuktu it never felt like the book was.
There is a section at the end, when they've all come back from years of living abroad, and find that the only people they can talk to about the journey is each other, which I related to intensely. I lived in Japan for a couple of years, and it's nearly impossible to explain what it was like to anyone who wasn't there. For those scenes I finally felt like I understood and enjoyed Nicholas, who otherwise is a cipher who leaves me cold in these books.
The end of this book is, frankly, bonkers. I won't have time to pick up the next book for a few weeks, but I'm definitely going to be thinking about it the entire time.
Grade: B
#63 in 2017
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