H. Rider Haggard wrote in the late 1800s. He is credited with inventing the lost civilization adventure. His most famous of books are:

• She (1886)
• King Solomon’s Mines (1885)
• Allan Quartermain (1887)
• People of the Mist (1894)

When I began my list of classic Adventure stories I had not read in their original, I included all four on my list. I could have started with any of them but chose She to take on my recent vacation to Lake Superior and the North Shore.

When I started this classic Adventure novel project, I knew that I would have some unexpected surprises and and unexpected disappointments. Before reading She, I had read a number of essays on Haggard and his influence on writers as important as Kipling and Conan Doyle. My expectations were fairly high. She was an unexpected disappointment.

She, transports readers to a mysterious African kingdom. The story follows Professor Horace Holly and his ward, Leo Vincey, as they embark on a perilous journey to uncover the secrets of an ancient civilization.

Their quest leads them to the enigmatic Ayesha, a powerful and immortal sorceress known as “She-who-must-be-obeyed.” Ayesha, driven by a longing for eternal love, believes Leo to be the reincarnation of her lost lover, Kallikrates.

As the narrative unfolds, the characters confront dangerous trials, encounter exotic cultures, and delve into the depths of a forgotten world.

Between the uncomfortable nature of Haggard’s Victorian/Colonial understanding of race and the long pseudo-philosophical dialogues, I quickly found myself skipping paragraphs to quicken the pace. Not something you should need to do in a real Adventure novel. Certainly not something you would ever need to do in an Edgar Rice Burroughs or Alexandre Dumas novel.

As an aside, mushy pseudo-philosophical (read that sophomoric) ramblings are one of the things that have traditionally caused me to abandon a lot of SciFi and Fantasy books over the years. In fact, there are a number of critically acclaimed and popular SciFi/Fantasy writers I just cannot read precisely because they cannot resist the urge to do this. Perhaps if I had not spent so much time studying theology and philosophy I would have more patience for such drivel. But alas, I do not.

Unless you are determined to read the core works of the Classic Adventure canon as I am, feel free to skip She.

She is in the Public Domain, making it free to anyone who wants to download and read it. Here is a link to a link to the book on Project Gutenberg