King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard

A couple of years ago, a movie called The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen came out, based on a series of comics by the same name. I had high hopes, because it was described as a kind of Justice League with literary characters instead of superheroes: Dr. Jekyll, Captain Nemo, the Invisible Man, Tom Sawyer, Mina Harker and more. I still think it's a fascinating idea and the movie was definitely fun, but it was also a bit of a disappointment. Several characters were very inaccurate, the worst of which I'd have to say was portraying Mina Harker as a vampire, when the entire point of Stoker's Dracula was to prevent that very occurrence.

But anyway, one thing that piqued my interest was that the pseudo-main character (at least in the movie) was a character I'd never even heard of: Allan Quartermain. How could this be? A literary hero of enough fame to stand beside Nemo and Jekyll, and yet I'd never heard of him? Turns out he's the hero of several works by H. Rider Haggard, the first of which was King Solomon's Mines. So, when the chance came to read it, I jumped. Maybe it was a wonderful story, fallen from popularity and fame, but ripe for rediscovery!

Overview
So, it turned out to be not so much ripe as starting to spoil. A fun adventure story, but rife with melodrama and uncomfortable racial issues. I can see why it was ridiculously popular and groundbreaking, but I wouldn't say worthy of resurrection. According to Wikipedia, it was the founding novel of the 'Lost World' genre, and inspired works such as Edgar Rice Burrough's The Land that Time Forgot, Arthur Conan Doyle's The Lost World, and Rudyard Kipling's The Man Who Would Be King. I haven't read any of these later lost world books, but considering the authors, they might be worth checking out. I wonder if Journey to the Center of the Earth would also fit the bill? Probably.

Anyway, the plot of Mines is that the wealthy Sir Henry has discovered that his younger brother ran off on a wild goose chase after the legendary diamond mines of King Solomon, and hasn't been seen since. He enlists the help of one Allan Quartermain, a skilled hunter, wise in the ways of Africa, and our narrator, to bring him back. As luck would have it, Quartermain happens to have some secret information about a possible route to the mines, and although he is fairly certain that none of them will make it back alive, agrees to join Sir Henry's expedition. After a long and deadly journey, they make it to a land of paradise, home to . . . a lost civilization, what else? And then even more adventure happens.

Recommended for: Boys and tomboys between the ages of maybe 8 - 13 (I'm usually not that specific, but there's a fairly narrow range between being old enough to handle the violence but not old enough to mind the painfully written melodrama)

Audiobook Comments: Read by John Richmond who does a pretty good job. The part I found amusing is that although the LoEG movie had Sean Connery play Quartermain, it's actually Sir Henry that sounds like Connery's rough British adventurer, while Quartermain has a much more polished, polite sound.

Parental Worries: There's a fair amount of violence, but not above PG13 level. There's also a pair of mountains called 'Sheba's Breasts', if you have a problem with anatomical geography.

Ramblings
I guess this is the part where I discuss the racial issues I mentioned earlier. It's mostly an effect of the times--this was one of the first novels set in colonial Africa and shows the mindset of Victorian England towards the natives. In its favor, it was probably actually fairly revolutionary for the time--Quartermain in particular has a very high regard for Africans. He talks about having met several natives more deserving of the title 'gentleman' than many of his fellow Englishmen, and several of the book's characters illustrate this. On the other hand, the
English characters do not hesitate to assume the guise of visiting gods when they reach their lost civilzation, and there's a whole string of natives willing to nobly sacrifice themselves for the Englishmen. I don't consider myself to be very sensitive towards racial issues, but even I found it to be somewhat stomach-turning. (although I couldn't say how much was due to the melodrama and how much was the condesension) So, all in all, Mines was a fun trip back in time if you don't take it with any kind of seriousness, but not a timeless classic by any stretch of the imagination.