Control of the Thunder Dragon Gate means control over Asia. Located on the Roof of the World, in the shadow of Mt. Everest, the gate draws participants in intrigue from Japan, America, the Soviet Union, China, and the British Raj. It is also the site of a vicious war between Tibet's two religious strains, the established Buddhism of the monasteries and the ancient practitioners of Bön, which predated Buddhism. And all sides seek to manipulate the newly appointed Keeper of the Gate.

That Talbot could so effectively bring off a discussion of the vying traditions of Tibetan Buddhism and the Bön is yet another indication of the depth of his knowledge and ability to bring sophisticated cultural perspectives to his adventure fiction. Yes, he may have gone overboard with some aspects of the Buddhist Red Hat and Yellow Hat sects. And he may have embellished the magic and what he considered the sinister leanings of Bön. But the atmosphere he creates rings with authenticity. Has any other popular writer ever approached these sects and religions in such detail? Maybe Mundy in some of his other works.

Otherwise, this is another marvelous adventure. From London to Delhi to Tibet. the reader shares the clammy fog that envelopes the British capital, the sweaty heat that lies over India, and the bone chilling freeze that wraps around Tibet and the Himalayas.

Written in the late 1930s, in 1937 to be exact, The Thunder Dragon Gate, for the first time in the series of novels I have so far read, incorporates Japanese villainy into Mundy's work. Mundy knows a World War is approaching. Few people alive at the time didn't realize the world was on the brink of war. But Mundy is getting the participants and their goals depicted correctly, here. No mention of Hitler or the Germans, although there is an acknowledgment of Mussolini's threat. Strange, that, because the Germans were always the featured behind the scenes manipulators of violence and the threat to world peace in Mundy's earlier books.

Yes, Mundy gets the upcoming worldwide conflict rightly drawn in this novel. But he would never live to see his premonitions come to the fore. He would die in August 1940, just a few months after the Fall of France and a few more months before the fall of European and American outposts in Asia and the Pacific to Japan. ( )