She

A beautifully written Victorian era supernatural adventure! A little bit dry at times, making some parts difficult to get through, but it shines beautifully when it needs to. The world created in this book is incredibly dark and beautiful, the character of She a haunting one, unique for her time. Definitely a book I would recommend to anyone looking for some less well known Classical literature.

We discovered this book after reading another of Haggard's books, Brethren, which is excellent as well. Discovering She has been like finding a long buried treasure chest. It is full of precious gems. Surely Haggard must have had an influence on later writers such as Lewis and Tolkien.

My brother read this book and was so thrilled with it, he convinced me to read it. It had to be a total ground breaker in it's day and definitely did set the stage for authors coming later. I remember when the movie came out in the 50's, but I have never seen it. The plot is very interesting and keeps the reader's interest until the very end. The love between the adoptive father and his son is wonderful to behold. I plan to read the other 2 "she" stories. If you enjoy fantasy books you would like this one. Just be prepared for the language of the day as it can get very flowery sometimes.

An interesting story. I read it after seeing the movie with Ursula Andress. I enjoyed comparing the two and noticing the similarities and differences. Not a can't-put-it-down type of read but still enjoyable.

It's a shame this excellent story was butchered by whomever was supposed to edit it and the proof-reader if there was one should be tarred and feathered. No one can read the Kindle version of "She" and think it could be one of the best and most popular novels ever written. Allan Quatermain would shoot the person with his eight bore rifle who offered this great book to Kindle readers in it's current, slaughtered form.

With the high praise I expected a better read. But it was just okay. The story itself was different, but so are a great many stories these days from people like Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and John Saul. Maybe in its time it was more unique and so better received.

Given the tenor of the current "most helpful reviews", I feel I should point out that whatever formatting issues the book had have been fixed. There are no blocks of question marks, just a few pages of Greek in the early part (it might as well be question marks for me and, I imagine, 99% of readers) and the occasional footnotes from Haggard's text are set off from the main body and in a different font.

She was big in the 1880s, and is still of interest for its importance to Freud and Jung with its female archetype, and the light it sheds on imperialist mentality and rationale, not to mention the potent mix of misogyny and lust in the male characters, and the suggestion of evil inherent in female beauty in the reflections on She herself. Haggard's narrator actually uses the word misogyny, and openly denigrates the female gender, so She's eventual materialization is a confirmation of his fears of the diabolic potency of the feminine. "Passion [for women] is to men what gold and power are to women - the weight upon their weakness", quoth our narrator. The novel is very fin-de-siecle in its exploration of lust and degradation. It reminded me of a story I read a while back, Arthur Machen's "The Great God Pan", from 1894, which I'm sure was significantly influenced by this book. Also, the structure of the story and the journey into forbidden and horrible knowledge in the centre of Africa suggests Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". Perhaps he too was influenced by Haggard.

But aside from this contextual interest, I didn't really enjoy She. The writing is undistinguished, at times annoying. Once She enters it's very dialogue-heavy, and for some reason the dialogue is all thees and didsts and fies and cod-archaisms of that sort. She is actually a bit of a windbag, and more mystery, and indeed tension, might have been maintained if She had said less. The narrator is also a bit too fond of falling back on the old "my pen is insufficient", "it was indescribable", etc, at big moments. He's right, though: his descriptions where he does attempt them are rather prosaic. Though it has some interesting elements and situations, She loses out at the level of style for me, and is less interesting in itself than in its status as a representative text of the imperialist and masculinist mindset in late 19th-century England.

I was looking for an edition that included all the plates, sketches, maps, etc. This edition claims to be illustrated, so imagine my surprise when I looked for the picture of tbe scarab and found instead "sketch omitted". This is not an illustrated edition, despite their claims.

The only edition that I found to contain all the original plates is the DELFI CLASSIC ANTHOLOGY (Illustrated).

It's a Victorian era adventure story written by the same author that wrote the Alan Quartermain novels. Most of the characters are very two-dimensional and Haggard spends a ton of time describing the scenery as the characters travel but it was a quick and not un-enjoyable read.

It's a Victorian era adventure story written by the same author that wrote the Alan Quartermain novels. Most of the characters are very two-dimensional and Haggard spends a ton of time describing the scenery as the characters travel but it was a quick and not un-enjoyable read.

Thank you for offering this service of downloading a book onto my kindle. I live in Germany and do not have access to a large book store with english books so this was a treasure I have thoroughly enjoyed. Quick and easy, and very very inexpensive.

Haggard is no Edgar Rice Burroughs, but his writing is along the same line. This book is the origin for the phrase "she who must be obeyed." If you liked Burroughs and are looking for something new, then you'll want to read "She".

Onceinto this book one encounters the ancient "document" that triggers the adventure, first in supposed translation, then in seemingly unending pages describing the purported original Greek, letter by letter naming each in English capitals enclosed in curly braces. To pursue this to a resumption of the narrative one must sit endlessly pressing the "next page" bar without enlightenment. I am certain that to derive meaning from this one must both read and write Greek, provided that the purported writing does indeed say what the "translation" has already said. I saw no way to skip over this and abandoned the tale. It is worth the price at most.

If the supernatural is your style then maybe you should like this book.
If not forget this very weird tale. Best read while having a strong drink and believe little of what you have read.

The Retired Mad Scientist

Call me simpleton but I just did not understand this book. I suppose to premise was a bit interesting and given that it's a 'classic' there's a lot to it's time period, but as a modern day novel I just had a hard time finding it worth reading through