Reviews tagging 'Colonisation'

King Solomon's Mines by H. Rider Haggard

6 reviews

old_man_niemand's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

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librarymouse's review against another edition

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adventurous medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

2.0

This is every bit what I'd expect of an adventure novel from the 1880s. Surprisingly, the novel had far less overt hate for Africans and far less overt racism, as compared to a book like Doctor Doolittle, published in the 1920s. I'm not sure that I necessarily enjoyed it, but the form and mode of storytelling were interesting, and the travel sections were engaging. There is quite a lot of murder, excessive game hunting, killing for ivory, and consumption of meat in this book, as well as detailed description and discussion of corpses.
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taylarae's review against another edition

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adventurous slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

2.25

It was fine. As a historical device, It can give a lot of context into how those in Victorian-era England viewed Southern Africa and other colonies. But it is littered with very racist views and words, which is to be expected from it, but the constant use of the k-word did make it very difficult to read for me personally. 
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amphipodgirl's review against another edition

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adventurous fast-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? No
  • Loveable characters? No
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? No

3.0

This is a hard one to rate. It was written in 1885 by a white Englishman who had worked in the colonizing force in southern Africa, and it is just as racist, sexist, imperialist, and colonialist as that would lead you to expect. He just has no respect for people of African descent or the cultures of Africa, and when one of them does get a compliment it is extremely back-handed. But it's a compelling adventure tale, and the writing is much more straightforward than I expected -- I had braced myself for Dickensian levels of sentence complexity, and it's a lot more modern-feeling than that.
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bouebooks's review against another edition

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adventurous dark medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? Plot
  • Strong character development? It's complicated
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

3.0

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ayah_reads's review against another edition

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slow-paced
First book for my Empire and it's Fictions course! Aside from being the usual imperialist garbage that depicts Africans as only barbaric or in servitude (this I had very much expected), it's an incredibly boring book. It's written as a letter to his son, and I feel sorry that this fictional son has to read such a long and ridiculously detailed story, even though at points the main character would leave details out, it was still such long, and boring story. British people really thought this was fun? An enjoyable adventure romance novel that became a bestseller 🙄
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