Thomcat
11/24/2013
Been meaning to read this for a while, and it is on a friend's University reading list. I chose the annotated version so as to have a better understanding of 120 year old language.
Enjoyed this quite a bit, the first third was pure adventure novel. When finally they met up with She, things slowed down, as Haggard used antiquated English to reflect the characters use of archaic Arabic language. Apparently this convention was used by other authors of the day, but that didn't make it any easier for me to follow.
Difficult language and all, the adventure story takes a few interesting twists past this point. I think a quote from page 161 sums the entire story up nicely - "... by a law of nature man is apt to think but lightly of a woman's crimes, especially if that woman be beautiful, and the crime committed for the love of him."
Having never read H. Rider Haggard before, I intend to seek out at least King Solomon's Mines - preferably an annotated version thereof.