Sydney Sheldon’s Master of the Game: Reaction

Master of the game is a kind of story that will make you see life from the other side. Sheldon is really is the best story teller. Showing the reader a sequence of event from the very root of the story. It really amaze me how he arrange the story. How you see or realize the transition of the story. We Just then look back and realize that wow, many things already happened but then you’re not yet even at the center part of the book or you’re not half way there.

But theirs a lot to take in already. Sheldon will do that to you, or at least that’s what I felt. The story then moves one hundred years back to Jamie McGregor. He leaves his home in Scotland for Klipdrift, South Africa in 1883 under the assumption that many get wealthy there by mining diamonds. He nearly dies making it there due to the only safe means there being fully booked, and Jamie nearly dies by taking the mail carrier which does not stop moving for two days.

Making it there, he is encouraged by the town’s bartender Smit to see the wealthy Dutch storekeeper, Salomon Van Der Merwe, for assistance in mining. Besides meeting Van Der Merwe, he meets Banda, Van Der Merwe’s black servant, and Margaret, Van Der Merwe’s daughter, who encourages him to get assistance. However, after nearly risking his life to find diamonds, he finds out that he has been defrauded and that the Afrikaans-written contract states that Jamie is merely a laborer for Van Der Merwe looking for a diamond mine and Van Der Merwe now owns the mine on his own.

When Jamie attempts to fght back, it is revealed that Smit and Van Der Merwe are working together and they make Banda leave Jamie in the desert to die. Banda later revives and saves Jamie from being eaten by vultures, saying he believes Jamie will help Banda find vengeance for Banda’s sister who died at the age of eleven after being aped and then eventually giving birth to Van Der Merwe’s child. They plan an extremely risky diamond heist in the Namib Desert and make it out alive. Banda only takes enough for him to buy a farm and a wife while Jamie keeps the rest.

Jamie, now rugged and unrecognizable, returns to Klipdrift after a year of being taken into the desert, where no one faintly remembers him and he goes under the assumed name of Ian Travis. By depositing his diamonds into a bank, the whole town recognizes Ian Travis as a wealthy businessman. Van Der Merwe takes an interest to Jamie/lan’s plan o invest in a diamond mine, hoping to capitalize on it. With help from a reformed Smit, Jamie eventually makes Margaret fall for him and makes love to her. When they learn that Margaret is pregnant, Jamie tells Van Der Merwe the truth, and refuses to marry his daughter.