SPOILER: Fun adventure stories. In King Solomon's Mines, the author portrays a romance between an Englishman and an African woman and the sad impossibility of their marrying and living in England. I especially liked the ending when the explorers return home: it turns out that there's a much easier, shorter path than the nearly-deadly one they used at the beginning of their trip. ( )

Haggard has a bit of a "dated" flavor to him, but at least his writing is of a higher quality than that of Edgar Rice Burroughs. I'd rate King Solomon's Mines and Allan Quatermain each at 3½*** while placing She substantially lower — I don't know what the Victorians would have called She's "philosophizing" but to me it has too much of a New Age flavor. (Though I haven't seen it in ages, my recollection of the 1965 Ursula Andress adaptation of She is a good deal more favorable, whether that's through the mists of memory or whether the movie perhaps had less "philosophizing.") ( )

I found the adventure tale a tremendously enjoyable read with an appealing narrator in Allan Quatermain. It is a story of a group of treasure hunters searching legendary diamond mine in a lost land. In the story the veteran hunter Allan Quatermain with his friends Sir Henry Curtis and Captain John Good, accompanied by Umbopa, their native servant, set off to reveal the fate of Curtis's missing brother - he has gone to look for the treasure of King Solomon in the land of Kukuanas. They cross imposing deserts, nearly freeze in the mountains, and after a long journey they reach their destination. Umbopa turns out to be a king of the Kukuanas and, with the help of Quatermain and his friends, he defeats the villainous King Twala, who dies in the combat with Curtis. The adventurers find Solomon's mines, but are left to die in an underground vault by Gagool, a mysterious witch-doctor. After an escape, with a few handfuls of diamonds, they find Curtis's brother and return to the civilization. Suspense abounds and the story reads like a precursor to some of the adventures of "Indiana Jones". They are Rider Haggard originals, however, and merely serve as the models for many adventurers who followed them in literature and film. Reading this book reminded me of my early love of the wonder I found in the adventure tales of Robert Louis Stevenson. ( )

Rider Haggard is a prolific adventure writer. Once you start his book you will not put it down. Most excellent. ( )

636 p. ; 21 cm.