Book Review: King Solomon’s Mines and Other Adventure Classics compiled by Sterling Publishing Company
This is another bulky compilation of public domain stories, concentrating this time on tales of adventure and derring-do in exotic locations. Indeed, the book is broken into sections by terrain–desert, jungle, South Seas islands, and other scenes unfamiliar to their readers. There’s twenty-five stories in total, but let’s begin with those that are so famous they need their own mini-reviews.
The book opens with The Man Who Would Be King by Rudyard Kipling. A reporter in India (a not at all disguised version of Kipling himself) happens across two scoundrels who plan to take over a distant part of Afghanistan, making themselves kings. Some time later, the survivor arrives on the reporter’s doorstep with a report on how the plan went. The story is both soaked in colonialism (the two British fellows and their superior armament easily take over the valley with their superior armaments, arrogance and a surprise appearance by Freemasonry) and a devastating example of how a colonial attitude can result in utter disaster.
Most notably, this story demonstrates the importance of consent in an intimate relationship. It doesn’t matter what her father says, make sure the woman you’re interested in is okay with the marriage–and you might want to find out what her kinks are before getting in arm’s reach.
The Mark of Zorro by Johnston McCulley, originally published as “The Curse of Capistrano,” is the first Zorro story. A lot of things in this first novel are very different from the movies and even the later books. For starters, in this initial story, the narration treats Don Diego de la Vega as a different person from Zorro until the last chapter. It’s never a secret from the reader who is bright enough to put two and two together, but there is always the sense that there might just possibly be a twist ending. Also, in the final chapter, Zorro reveals his identity to the public after killing off the main villain and prepares to marry his sweetheart Lolita Pulido. The sequel carries on from that, but the third and subsequent stories simply ignored that this ending ever happened.
This is great stuff, full of sword fights, desperate chases and hot-blooded romance. Don Diego and Zorro are possessed of a wicked sense of humor and use their secret for elaborate practical jokes.
However, while Zorro does fight for justice and protects the oppressed, he’s no democratic hero. Zorro is very proud of his social status, and sees true injustice in having a blue-blooded family thrown in the same prison as the lowborn. And he solves the political corruption not with fair elections, but by inspiring the local noblemen to stand up for their rights as leaders of the community. He’s also a bit fuzzy on consent, stealing a kiss, but then being far more considerate of Lolita’s desires than the villain, who is just fine with blackmailing the young woman into marriage.
The volume being compiled rather than edited is obvious in this selection, as the file used for the story is full of typos, and I have noted other reviews of “Mark” noting that the file on a certain online database had identical issues.
King Solomon’s Mines by H. Rider Haggard is the last story in the volume, the first novel about Allan Quatermain and his search for the mines of the title. The story begins when it turns out that Allan, a “great white hunter” was the last white man to see an explorer alive before he disappeared on a quest to find the diamond mines. Allan is approached to guide the explorer’s brother Sir Henry Curtis and his handsome friend Captain Good in an attempt to find the explorer, and maybe the mines themselves. As they’re setting up the expedition, a native named Umbopa talks his way on to the team. His mysterious past proves crucial to the plot.
Allan is a little different from the usual adventure protagonist of the time period, being in middle age with a grown son (studying medicine in England) and feeling that he’s already outlived his expected time on Earth. He agrees to guide the expedition on the grounds that he might as well die on one last great adventure, and because Sir Henry agreed to a fee sufficient for Allan’s son to finish his education even if everyone perishes on the journey. By the standards of the time, Mr. Quatermain is not particularly racist–he uses the “N word” once, and decides it’s a bad word so discards it, but because he’s spent most of his life in South Africa feels comfortable calling natives “kafir.” He’s not overly educated, but has a good command of language; several passages are lyrical and moving, and there’s a funny moment when he uses ten-dollar words to let on that someone’s been drawing dicks on the bases of the statues at the mines.
Aside from the racism, colonialism and a bit of sexism, some modern readers may find descriptions of the wasteful hunting practices of the time disturbing. Quatermain and his companions think nothing of slaughtering an entire herd of elephants for their ivory and one night’s dinner. As to the sexism, there’s a running joke where Captain Good takes the role usually given to a woman of “the character that is largely valued for their looks.”
That said, this is one of the all-time great adventure novels and has some terrific combat scenes, and a terrifying passage within a sealed mine. Highly recommended if you can get past the period issues.
In addition to the novel-sized stories, there are shorter tales ranging from excellent (“A Descent Into the Maelstrom” by Edgar Allan Poe and “The Caballero’s Way” by O. Henry) through notable (“The Capture of Tarzan” by Edgar Rice Burroughs and “The Beach of Falesa” by Robert Louis Stevenson) to just okay.
A couple of stories have more than the usual issues. “Sword of Gimshai” by Joseph W. Musgrave goes whole hog in the “clever white person bamboozles superstitious natives” direction, which is especially painful as it comes from 1954, a good bit after most of these tales. And then there’s “Lord of the Jackals” by Sax Rohmer. The titular weird hermit with animal control powers is supposed to be the creepy character. He isn’t. Instead it’s the narrator, who is telling the story many years later about when he first came to Egypt when he was nineteen. He does warn us at the beginning that he was a bit of a jerk back then, what with abusing his host’s sacred hospitality to attempt to seduce the Bedouin chief’s daughter. I’m nodding along, until the narrator mentions that this girl was twelve at the time. He then hauls out the excuse that “Arab girls mature faster” but seriously dude, the tribesmen were right to attempt to kill you on the spot. The jerk doesn’t even show a decent amount of gratitude to the Lord of the Jackals for saving his worthless life, but just goes on about how creepy the old guy is.
Overall, a strong collection of stories that is well worth seeking out, but those with low tolerance for some of the less savory aspects might be better served by checking out the public domain storage sites on the internet and just downloading the stories that are less triggery. It’s up to you.
And here’s the trailer for the movie of “The Man Who Would be King.”
