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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Alzrius" data-source="post: 9806183" data-attributes="member: 8461">I just finished reading H. Rider Haggard's 1887 novel <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/She:_A_History_of_Adventure" target="_blank">She: A History of Adventure</a>, and have to say that I'm quite impressed by it!I'm slightly chagrined that I hadn't heard of this title as recently as a month ago, only finding out about it because of a <a href="https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WikiWalk" target="_blank">"wiki walk"</a> which began (as so many things do) with D&D. Specifically, <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/new-unearthed-arcana-brings-back-five-subclasses.715993/" target="_blank">the brouhaha</a> about changing the "Way of the Drunken Master" subclass's name led me to read Wikipedia's page about <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drunken_boxing" target="_blank">drunken boxing</a>, which led me to read about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eight_Immortals" target="_blank">Eight Immortals</a> (who were also known as the Eight Drunken Immortals, after whom drunken boxing is named), which led to me reading about the <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_Mother_of_the_West" target="_blank">Queen Mother of the West</a> (who, in some myths, granted the Eight Drunken Immortals their power), which led to me reading about She (as the titular character is referenced with regard to the Queen Mother of the West as part of the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen).Having reached the Wikipedia page for the book, I was surprised that I hadn't heard of it before, given how seminal it apparently has become for what are now considered to be classic adventure tropes. As the page tells us, not only did it help to pioneer and popularize the "Lost World" (sub)genre of adventure tales, but the titular She was an inspiration to the likes of Rudyard Kipling, J. R. R. Tolkien, and Margaret Atwood, among others. Yet not only had I never heard of it before, but knew virtually nothing about the author, H. Rider Haggard (the sole exception being that I recognized the name Allan Quatermain, another literary creation of Haggard's, though I couldn't have told you anything about him).Naturally, I set off to rectify this oversight at once, ordering a copy of the book and (barring some interruptions from real-life that prevented me from finishing this a few days ago) quickly devoured it.Now, having finished the tale, I have to say that I found it captivating from beginning to end, and can see why it's attained such a lofty status in the canon of adventure stories.With regard to the narrative itself, I'll not rehash any specifics; the book's Wikipedia page can do that far better. Rather, what struck me as notable is that Haggard's prose seemed to somehow occupy a middle ground between familiar and dated, presenting itself in a vernacular that feels casual and engaging while at the same time being just different enough that there's still an air of antiquity about it. Given that the entire story is presented in a first-person narrative, the results are much like talking to a well-educated professor who is nonetheless worldly and unpretentious in his presentation. As this is a near-perfect description of the narrating character himself, I suspect that this is at least somewhat deliberate on Haggard's part.As it is, the story deals heavily in archetypes (though I suspect that its detractors would label them stereotypes instead), with its narrator being a man of high learning, his ward being a virtual Adonis who while not uneducated is far from being a professor himself, and of course Ayesha (pronouced "Assha," and who is the eponymous She, also called She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed) as a sort of "divine feminine" in her presentation, exemplifying both good and ill traits which (characteristically) represent women.This last duality has made the book a repeated point of study and critique over the years. It's likewise something which I'm certain Haggard did deliberately, as the narrator himself finds Ayesha supernaturally captivating even as he decries the functions of her autocratic rule. Ayesha herself eschews labels such as good and evil, noting how one often produces the other in terms of actions and consequences.But if there's nuance in the book's presentation of femininity, the same is harder to say for the aspects of racism, colonialism, and even antisemitism (that last one being only found in an idle comment or two, notwithstanding Ayesha's disdain of that and most other ancient religions) which undergird the book's themes. The African tribe which Ayesha rules over being not only still at (or only barely above) Stone Age levels of technology, but engaging in cannibalism, reflects (according to the introduction to the Penguin Classics copy of the book that I purchased, wanting to make sure to have contextualization and footnotes after having <a href="https://www.enworld.org/threads/what-are-you-reading-in-2025.709371/post-9791819" target="_blank">previously lamented</a> their absence in another work) Haggard's beliefs in the virtues of colonialism and the inherent savagery of people with dark skin.Having said that, the presence of these elements didn't detract from the story's power, at least for me. I'd go so far as to purport that—harder to say though it may be—there is some nuance there, not only for how the Englishmen in the tale were neither able to overawe the native people they came into contact with nor outsmart them, but for the fact that at one point one of them strikes up (at the woman's behest) a romantic relationship with one of them, which is presented in remarkably even terms (and also becomes a major plot point later in the story). None of that redeems the uncomfortable aspects of the book, but it does characterize them in a way that makes them feel (for lack of a better term) incidental to the story that Haggard wanted to tell, as opposed to being a thinly-veiled attack piece.Overall, this is a story that easily self-justifies its place as a foundational work of adventure fiction, and whose influence can be seen in many stories that came after it. I heartily recommend it to anyone who's interested in classic tales of derring-do.</blockquote>

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