[What] makes The Dahomean seem superior to Yerby's earlier best sellers?

I believe a major reason is that Frank Yerby has written about the history of Africans and that I, as a Black man, am more interested in the generally ignored account of my ancestral past than I am in another gallop—even a thrilling gallop—through the frequently traveled terrain of medieval Europe or the Crusades or the antebellum American South. (p. 52)

[Despite] Yerby's comment that the Furtoos (whites) may have been more coldbloodedly cruel, there is nothing distinctively or generically Black or African about the character, intelligence, or behavior of the Africans in Yerby's novel….

That, perhaps, is what Yerby has been saying, or thinking, throughout a quarter of a century of writing novels: the differences between people do not stem from a difference of blood but a difference of opportunity and power. (p. 84)

The story clearly supports Yerby's philosophy that worldly success is not determined by one's goodness and virtue—or, in this case, by racial purity and blood—but by strength and by the intelligence and ruthlessness to use that strength towards one's ends….

The Dahomean implies that Blacks appear more virtuous and loving historically only because the history books do not detail the careers of Blacks with the power to be tyrants. Yerby's historical research (which I have learned not to dispute) tells of Black men who slaughtered and sold members of their own tribe, who fed their vanities with oppression, who slaughtered neighbors in senseless wars, who taxed and spied upon their subjects, who tried to murder their leaders, who established despotic rule, and who satiated their various lusts with abominable cruelties. (p. 85)

Virtues of the book then are the presentation of an exciting and illuminating history of Black people and a determined focus of the story on a single Black hero. But there is more. In The Dahomean, Yerby's strength reveals itself to best advantage and even his former weaknesses become strengths. His primary strength is as a historical novelist, or, as he would say, a writer of "costume" novels. Even though he has written with seriousness and concern about contemporary events in Cuba and France or about relatively contemporary events in the white American South, Yerby is at his best when he envelops his plot with a history he has unearthed painstakingly and with a serious or satirical but always devastating debunking of historical legends and myths. That achievement is superior in The Dahomean, not so much in the presentation of historical facts as in the presentation of a people and a culture. (pp. 85-6)

I was delighted to find myself unable to criticize elements which, I felt, weakened some of his earlier novels. In particular, I have criticized his penchant for sticking foreign terms into the dialogue for the sake of authenticity, his tendency to digress in essays in which he provided the historical background he had not been able to work into his plot, and his over reliance on chance to effect outcomes. All of these appear in The Dahomean; but, because of the particular setting, they are desirable rather than disturbing. (p. 86)

Most important of all, however, may be the fact that Yerby finally has a structure in which the whims of Fate seem to be natural forces to effect outcomes….

It is this fatalism, however, which causes my only dissatisfaction with the story…. I do not—cannot—protest against the protagonist's behavior; it is inevitable in terms of his character and philosophy. Yet, emotionally, as a contemporary Westerner who admires him, I wish that I might see him squirm against the chains.

Where does Yerby go from here? Can he top The Dahomean? I do not know. Maybe he has produced his masterpiece. If so, it was worth waiting a quarter of a century for. (p. 87)