[As] Mr. Michener showed in his previous blockbusters, scope is his forte, and legions of readers will find that techniques applied successfully to other cultures have not failed [in "The Covenant"]. (p. 3)

As in some of his past works, Mr. Michener's characterizations are sometimes flat, his sentiments naïve, his dialogue unreal. Prehistoric Bushmen, their poisoned arrows proof of an ingenuity "that could in time contrive ways to build a skyscraper or an airplane," speak in an argot borrowed from 20th-century America; not long after the Boer War, early black nationalist leaders speak to each other in the jargon of a generation of sociologists yet unborn. Words like "exfoliate," "explicate" and "inspirit" come oddly from the typewriter of an author who seeks to educate as he entertains.

But these are quibbles. The book's accomplishment may be to offer a public inured to stereotypes a sense of the flesh...