Where Annja Gets a Rival

The Golden Elephant by Alex Archer
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I think this is a pretty good example of pulp fiction, which is why I give this a 4 (even though I'd score it lower if it were a stand-alone novel). Except for a few lulls, there's lots of Indiana-Jones type action. The setup for the plot--the search for a possibly-legendary relic--is pretty typical, but it works, and it's made to feel as realistic as any action movie of the same type. The characters are as round and believable as most genre fiction, and there are moments of deeper reflection than one might expect from this category of book. The exotic (to a Western audience) settings are fleshed out quite well. And though the stakes don't seem as high here as they might in other kinds of novels, reading a little bit more like a comic book, they are as high as you'd like them for this genre.

(That's a lot of caveats, I realize. But I feel like pulp is a different kind of writing and reading, with specific genre expectations, and I want to be clear about the rubric in my head.)

Annja is hunting for a golden elephant rumored to be somewhere in Southeast Asia. Her search becomes dangerous, and it's complicated by the interference of another young, capable, resourceful adventurer, Easy Ngwenya, who becomes a kind of rival to Annja. Their interactions become the most entertaining part of the story. Because Easy pushes her, Annja has to do some soul-searching about the ethicality of her whole relic-hunting lifestyle. She'd convinced herself she was saving important historical objects from treasure hunters, but she's forced to consider whether she isn't doing exactly that thing.

There's a good amount of philosophical musing taking place in the jungle while bullets are flying overhead, and I think it added something to the story.

Though it dragged in the middle and was headed toward a 3-star rating (in my mind), it pulled it out toward the end, especially the very end, and overall was breezy fun, both entertaining enough and satisfying enough to deserve four stars.

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