Monday, July 23, 2012

Book review - "Child of Storm" by H Rider Haggard

Part 2 in Haggard's Zulu trilogy, this centres around a civil war between two sons of the Zulu Chief, Panda, in which Quatermain is involved. He's mostly an observer in this story though, not it's not as good as Marie, where he was centre stage. Quatermain doesn't really have any stakes in it - he likes one brother more than the other, but he's not really involved.

The cause of the civil war is a woman, the sexy Mameena - another in Haggard's long line of hot, mischievous African babes. She has the hots for Quatermain at one stage but he doesn't go there - it's a shame, the poor guy could have used some release other than with a gun (and prevented a civil war in the meantime). But actually Mameena's role is surprisingly small - she's set up to do all this manipulative stuff, but we hear about it mostly through reportage, which isn't as fun. Also you never really buy she's into Quatermain.

There are some good action scenes, some interesting African characters, I like how Mameena keeps twisting these guys around her finger. But it's not top-rank Haggard.

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