Where She Moves in Mysterious Ways

She: A History of Adventure by H. Rider Haggard
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

I've seen recently that this is one of the top 10 best-selling books in the world. That's kinda cool.

And it's full of interesting ideas and images.

It's just so damn boring.

I enjoyed the beginning stretch, where the main character has a sort of ancient mystery, a puzzle, to try to solve. He and his ward study ancient languages and prepare for a journey to Africa to see if they can put together the clues from old documents and a potsherd. That's pretty fun. The voyage is decent adventure. But once they're on the ground in Africa, man! is it slow. A little action; then a lot of nothing. A whole bunch of caves. Everywhere, caves. An empty land and then more caves.

The character She, or She-who-must-be-obeyed, is amazing. Gorgeous and ancient and brilliant and unpredictable and pretty much evil. But so pretty that you lose your mind. Cool idea. (I wonder if David Farland, when writing the Runelords series, was inspired by this story when he made endowed characters who were made so charming by their glamour that they could not be resisted.) Bits of the book with her are good, but most of it is just. so. damn. slow.

Then we travel to a new cave yada yada yada...

So, some of this is entertaining. I give it 3 stars. Lots of ideas that came from Haggard and no one else and he should get credit for that imagination. But I can't help but think that any number of modern writers could make a far more compelling story from the same outline. I feel the same when I read H. P. Lovecraft; so much time is spent on setting and descriptions of ancient ruins. Let's do something!

Anyway. Kinda fun. Not bad enough to say don't read, but not good enough to push anyone toward it. Unless you want to make a graphic novel out of it or something. That might be good.

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