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Summary: Captures the spirit of the 19th Century like no other novel
Review: The dates and events portrayed by Ed Gibbon in his review tell you at once that this was not just some novel of the time but actually could have happened.Doctor Livingstone really could have appeared at any moment and not been out of place. Everything the modern mind knows about the times and events of the period are in evidence in this book. What is perhaps so amazing is that such a ripping yarn could so easily have happened to real people. I have watched a film called "Mountains of the Moon" which is the tail of Richard Burton and John Hanning Speke's search for the source of the Nile. Occurrances in that film tie in almost exactly with events in the book, particularly the strange and hostile tribes that both Allan Quartemain and Burton and Speke meet along their travels. Whether you read this as a grand and exciting journey through a strange land or as a text that evokes attitudes and events of Imperial Britain in Africa during the last century is up to you. It is written so well by Rider Haggard, however, that it is equally good as either.
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Summary: Wonderful reading.
Review: The greatest adventure novel ever written. Great reading for adults young and old. This is a novel you'll read until the wee hours of the morning. Highly recommended as a present for teenage boys. Quatermain is a great role model.
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Summary: dark continent, white legs
Review: The most remarkable thing about King Solomon's Mines is that -- well over a hundred years after it was first written, and with so many books, movies, and TV shows recycling the ideas -- it remains fresh and exciting. The Africa depicted here is a mysterious, vast place, essentially another world, and the reader is carried along on Quatermain's awed and vivid descriptions of the landscape. Quatermain himself is a great character, being a sometimes-fearful participant rather than a superhero, which makes him more appealing. In terms of pacing, Haggard never puts a foot wrong, and the whole tale is polished off with plenty of humour.
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Summary: A really great, classic, adventure book
Review: This book is a really good book for people who like adventures. I really liked this book because it was so exciting and it is a real page-turner. I was always anticipated to figure out what happens next. I would recommend this book to everyone who wants to read a very fun book.
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Summary: Good distraction
Review: This book is entertaining, but stay away from the gateway movie classics edition which is teeming with typos. The worst editing I have ever seen.
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Summary: A flawness romantic gem of imperial adventure
Review: This book is the perfect adventure of Victorian derring-do and is faultless as an example of the genre. Many of the storyline tricks that have been used many times over by more recent authors come from this classic story. Most readers also learn a good deal about an intelligent Victorian gentlemen's view of Africa. Haggard himself was involved intimately with African imperialism (having personally hauled up the Union Flag annexing the Transvaal in the late 1870s) and he writes about what he knows. Although his characters are to some extent typical adventure story heroes (don't look for a tortured inner life, or complicated ethics) they ring true, and in fact they can be considered to be archetypes of "good" imperialists. The Africans are depicted in a convincing fashion - with good and bad attributes and the two monsters of Twala and Gagool are splendid creations. Clearly Kukuanaland is a kind of Zululand or Matabeleland gone even more extreme and Twala seems to be based on a sort of distorted Chaka the Zulu king, but this is precisely what makes this story so real and gripping. The only other story that I think approaches this is written by a finer writer and is based on the imperial adventure in India: The Man Who Would be King. Alas and alack though there has never been a film version of King Solomon's Mines that even approaches the power of the novel, unlike The Man Who Would be King that was so brilliantly presented for the screen by John Houston.
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Summary: Beautiful
Review: This book is, I would have to say, is one of the best works of fiction that I have ever read. It starts a bit grindingly but once they enter Kukuanaland the story rolls into motion. GET THIS BOOK
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Summary: A really great, classic, adventure book
Review: This is the first in a series of several Allan Quatermain stories, and a classic of late 1800s adventure. The plot involves our hero, an aging elephant hunter, leading a party into deep dark Africa in search of wealth and mystery. Boys are certainly the target age for this genre, but be cautious with young readers, as glorified violence and racial stereotypes could use a mature approach when reading.. I found it a short entertaining page-turner, but ultimately it made little lasting impact on me, and I don't plan to read the rest of the Quatermain stories.
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Summary: Classic 1880s adventure story
Review: This is the first in a series of several Allan Quatermain stories, and a classic of late 1800s adventure. The plot involves our hero, an aging elephant hunter, leading a party into deep dark Africa in search of wealth and mystery. Boys are certainly the target age for this genre, but be cautious with young readers, as glorified violence and racial stereotypes could use a mature approach when reading.. I found it a short entertaining page-turner, but ultimately it made little lasting impact on me, and I don't plan to read the rest of the Quatermain stories.
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Summary: King Solomon's Mines
Review: This vigorous novel was written by an imaginative writer, H. Rider Haggard. He wrote an adventurous novel telling a story of a group of Europeans trying to find the legendary hidden mines of King Solomon. He writes the novel in a narrative way, in which he wrote the book in a journal form, written by the main character, Allan Quatermain. This makes the book more engaging, because the story incorporates the writer's feelings and thoughts as well as tells a very descriptive story of the significant events of their adventure. The author claims that he tells his story in "in a plain, straightforward manner" in the introduction. This book is easily read and enjoyable for people who like adventure stories.
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