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dark_reader 's review for:

She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard
3.0

I was surprisingly riveted by this book, given its age. I guess classics are classics for a reason, but I was surprised that She appealed so much to my current sensibilities. It is not hard to see why this book was the talk of the town (the town being London) at the time of its publication. There are plenty of vivid, memorable moments: the depiction of mortal combat between a lion and a crocodile, the terrifying "hot-pot" scene, and every rousing scene with the titular "She". All left a lasting impression of wide-eyed adventure and terror.

Unlike in Haggard's previous [b:King Solomon's Mines|23814|King Solomon's Mines (Allan Quatermain, #1)|H. Rider Haggard|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1418964233s/23814.jpg|575986], the main characters took little time to reach their intended lost-land destination, leaving a lot of room for the heart of the story. And similar to that other book, I found modern concerns of racism moderately well-managed; one character had a well-defined aversion to other races (not to mention to women) as a specific character trait, but overall the characters met African people with respect and equality. Of course, there is this problem of the magical white woman (properly, the character was approximately ancient Arabic) reigning eternally over this African region, so it is not quite a racially enlightened novel. I will fall back to my assessment of King Solomon's Mines and describe it as "not as racist as it could have been", for whatever that may be worth.