Just A Little Bit Racist

King Solomon's Mines is a work by H. Rider Haggard in which an old elephant hunter leads an expedition in search of a mans brother, and on this quest they discover the great kings diamond mines. The story is a fairly straight forward adventure story, there is an epic journey, lessons of morality, a finale battle and a little twist. The story to a modern audience is nothing necessarily fantastic but in it's day it was the first to look at adventure in exotic africa, bringing to the common person and glimpse of a strange foriegn land full of dangerous natives. Allan Quartermain is the narrator, main character, man of great wisdom, a keen hunter and a self confessed coward. He is met by two men who task him with being their guide as they seach for George Curtis, Sir Henry Curtis' lost borther. They cross a searing desert and scale the snowy peaks of the mountains called Sheba's Breasts. They find the body of a legendary adventure and face moments where when moments near to death they are saved by seeming miracles and occasionally the wisdom of Quartermain or the knowledge of the natives in their employ. Upon reaching the green and fertile land beyond the mountian, without a sing of the lost brother they are spurned on by hope of finding him, and the riches of diamonds. But first they must dabble in the polotics of the nation they discovered where the strange white wizards from the stars are viewed with awe and fear.

Reading this book it was evident to see how the man twists, turns, and near misses make H. Rider Haggard a fantastic adventure rider with many points driving you forward to read on just to be sure the well structured characters survive. At times the story has one to many coincidences to be taken entirely seriously but part of it's unbelievable nature is part of its charm. The language was at time difficult for me being in an old fashioned formale style, there was also an issue in that a lot of the ideas where "of that time". What I mean by this is that there is open racism, condoning of animal hunting on large, large scales and themes not present in todays society. But still this book had me reading on, it had a quality many books lack in it's pure sense of adventure and discovery.

Overall this is a well written book and a fantastic read. Some of the characters could have had further developement, and some events seemed unnecessary. But a good old book many modern story tellers could learn from.