Allan Quatermain

by H. Rider Haggard

One of the most pleasant discoveries I've made since I began this blog is that I love reading this author.

Allan Quatermain is the last novel in my Haggard compendium. Last summer I put away King Solomon's Mines and the summer before that, She. You know what? They're all good, real good. Surprisingly so, 'cause they aren't really what I look for in a novel.

Why do I like them?

At the risk of extreme simplification, Haggard knows how to tell an spellbinding story. There's none of the baggage of Victorian writing in his work. No hundred-word sentences, no flustery blustery prose, no pages upon pages of analysis of a social faux pas, no women beneath flowery umbrellae. There's no fretting and soul-searching and heart-rending hand-wringing. Indeed, whenever doubt creeps into a Haggardian character, he simply loads his elephant gun and kills a hippo.

He's credited with founding the "lost world" literary genre. Perhaps that's why I like his novels so. I remember the 4:30 movie on Channel 7 as a kid in the seventies, and I fondly recall "lost world" week. Iguanas masquerading as limb-tearing dinosaurs, giant spiders, diamonds and double-crossing, these pre-Indian Jones movies riveted me as a boy. Now, three decades later, the source material has me glued to the page.

I can't rightly rank them, though I think I liked She more than King Solomon. How could Haggard top those two, I thought, as I began Quatermain. But he did. In a way, Quatermain presents even a grander vision than the ones revealed in the previous novels. [I read the novels in the order I found them in the compendium: She, King Solomon's Mines, and Allan Quatermain. In chronological order, they appeared: King Solomon's Mines (1885), Allan Quatermain (1887), and She (later 1887).]

While She gives us Ayesha, an immortal queen, and King Solomon's Mines gives us, well, the fabled treasure mines of the Old Testament's King Solomon, Quatermain's quest is of even greater scope. Tantalizing hints of a lost civilization in the heart of the dark continent bring our aged hero - now an English millionaire pining for his deceased son - out of retirement. Dare I say it is a "white" civilization without being tarred and feathered? Whether descendendants of some Mediterranean society or a splintered branch of the Egyptian empire or one of the long lost tribes of Israel - rumour says little. Only the secondhand babblings of a dying man could get Allan out of his funk and repartnered with Sir Henry Curtis and Commodore Good and on safari in Africa for more lost worlds.

Immediately the party is attacked by ruthless and terrifying Masai warriors - warriors whose memory is long and wrath insatiable. A missionary's daughter is kidnapped for a fate worse than death, should not one of our three plucky heros offer himself in her place. Then there are suspenseful natural calamaties to be overcome. An unfortunate and uncontrolled descent into an underground river left me particularly claustrophobic and on the seat of my chair (especially the crab creature attack and the lava fountain of death). It kept me up past midnight one night to experience the resolution.

Then - the lost civilization of the Zu-Vendis is conveniently discovered. Two Queens this time, Nyleptha and Sorais, though mortal and very much jealous of each other and each's natural attractions to our various men of action. War tears the kingdom asunder as Allan treads a fine path to save it, his head, the heads of his friends, and the lives of millions of innocent men, women, and children. With his noble and in many ways superior Zulu warrior-comrade Umslopagaas (I love that!) Allan pulls it off - just barely - and at the probable cost of his own very life.

I loved it! Without a doubt, it was probably my best read this year so far, LotR notwithstanding. The pages flowed, the dialogue pulled me in, the action kept me up reading long after I should have been to bed. At the very end I felt a more-than-slight tinge of regret that I would no longer travel with these characters, these men, who have become endeared companions to me.

I give Allan Quatermain an A-minus.

There's also a new tradition of sorts that I've started: reading an H. Rider Haggard novel every August. My compendium's finished, but I have a couple of his titles to put on my Acquisitions List. Now, I don't know much about them besides a name and maybe a sentence-synopsis, but I'm willing to throw ten or twelve hours of my life into the kitty. Eric Brighteyes, a somewhat effeminately-titled Viking saga, and Belshazzar, possibly about that Biblical king who saw the writing on the wall are on it, as well as The World's Desire, Haggard's retelling of the Odyssey.

FYIs:

My review of She is here.

My review of King Solomon's Mines is here.

[I wrote this review without refreshing my memory of these other two reviews I wrote in 2009 and 2010.]