Because Old Ugly Face is the capstone to Talbot Mundy's career, it gets a better rating than it might deserve as a stand alone novel. Apparently, Mundy felt this was his best or among his best works. He was wrong. It's a fitting end for the philosophic pathways that he sought to illuminate in his novels. But the quality of those ideas, here, are lacking. As is the story itself.

Old Ugly Face picks up where The Thunder Dragon Gate left off, following the fate of Tom Grayne and Elsa Burbage but introducing another American adventurer, Andrew Gunning. And along the way, Mundy depicts a sort of sordid little love triangle--much reflective of Mundy's own personal shortcomings, I suspect. It also yields page after page of preachy sermons, most reflecting the sophomoric thoughts of Elsa, the fickle lady of superconscience who doesn't know if she is coming or going. Literally. Will she stay in Tibet? Or will she ditch her husband, Tom, and run away with Andrew?

In past books, Mundy would expertly weave and integrate his theosophical thoughts into the storyline. With Old Ugly Face, however, he does the opposite. And the philosophic dialogues, between Dr. Lewis and Andrew and Elsa and Nancy Strong, at first, and Elsa and Andrew for most of the remaining two-thirds, are often laborious. Yet I can see how Mundy felt motivated to get his thoughts out--he would soon die after the novel's publication.

One final image. Most of Mundy's stories take his characters and readers on a journey. For the last time, Old Ugly Face takes them on what is probably the ultimate quest--into the deep Himalayas, into Tibet, into snow and ice covered trails and hidden monasteries. There he leaves it to fashion out where life leads, what matters, how the world evolves. In a world at war when Mundy published, his optimism must have seemed revolutionary. ( )

A bit heavy on the mystical aspects for my taste, but it does pick up after awhile.

My copy is rather battered, has no dustjacket, but is complete... ( )