Reviews

Caves of Terror by Talbot Mundy

paul_cornelius's review against another edition

2.0

With Caves of Terror, Talbot Mundy brings a rather dissatisfying end to the Yasmini series. Athelstan King is back once again to renew his complicated rivalry with Yasmini, who, however, disappears for most of the book. Instead, King and his American associate are caught in a labyrinth of caverns underneath a secret Hindu sect's temple. There, they find many wondrous and fearful things and must work to keep them out of Yasmini's hands, as she aspires to worldwide domination.

If this seems all action and no thought, it is. If this seems more like pulp fiction for teenage boys, it is. If this seems too programmed and exploitive of the other books in the series, yes, it is. But at least Akbar the temperamental elephant returns to the series to turn over carts, scare people, and charge automobiles. Maybe Mundy should have written an Akbar series?

kjcharles's review

Inexcusable Orientalist sub-Buchan tosh, which pretty much goes without saying if you know the author, but lots of interest as well, including the fact that amid the tosh is an unequivocal message from the British hero (written 1924) that Britain should get the hell out of India. ("Self-government... I've been working for that ever since I cut my eye-teeth. So has every other British officer and civil servant who has any sense of public duty.")

Also an intriguing reflection, when the narrator is getting badly treated by the villain's henchwomen:

I think it was simply sex-venom--the half-involuntary vengeance that the underdog inflicts on the other when positions are reversed. When India's women finally break purdah and enter politics openly, we shall see more cruelty and savagery, for that reason, than either the French or Russian terrors had to show.

BRB off to perpetrate sex-venom.