" 4.5, but will round since "half stars" aren't permitted. Quite superb. In the company of -if not shoulders above- Mosquito Coast, The Poisonwood Bible, and even Burroughs' often neglected Ghost of Chance, and (of course) Conrad, but doesn't wallow TOO much in being a another grim account of the Missionary far afield and His/Her conflicts and contradictions with the "universal savage"...though in all honesty, it can't fully escape some of these inevitable trappings. More care is given to an indigenous perspective (probably due to Matthiessen's well known ethnographer-like rigor). The language captures the place without getting too flowery and purple, and given the date of copyright (1965) it doesn't seem dated in the least. "
— Nathan, 1/13/2014