The Fantastical Adventure Books - Premium Collection

Book excerpt: "She" is one of the classics of imaginative literature, and one of the best-selling books of all time. She was extraordinarily popular upon its release and has never been out of print. The story is a first-person narrative that follows the journey of Horace Holly and his ward Leo Vincey to a lost kingdom in the African interior. There they encounter a primitive race of natives and a mysterious white queen named Ayesha who reigns as the all-powerful "She", or "She-who-must-be-obeyed". In this work, Rider Haggard developed the conventions of the Lost World subgenre, which many later authors emulated. "Ayesha, the Return of She" is a gothic-fantasy novel, a sequel to his far more popular and well known novel, She. "The People of the Mist" is the tale of a British adventurer seeking wealth in the wilds of Africa, finding romance, and discovering a lost race and its monstrous god. "Allan and the Ice-Gods" featurs the famous character Allan Quartermain, and it is based on an idea given to Haggard by Rudyard Kipling. The story details Quartermain's past life regression to a stone-age ancestor and the various adventures involved. "She and Allan" is a novel, in which Haggard brought together his two most popular characters, Ayesha from She (to which it serves as a prequel), and Allan Quatermain from King Solomon's Mines. Table of Contents: She: A History of Adventure The World's Desire Eric Brighteyes The People of the Mist Ayesha Wisdom's Daughter Heu-Heu Allan and the Ice-gods Love Eternal She and Allan Sir Henry Rider Haggard (1856-1925) was an English writer of adventure novels set in exotic locations, predominantly Africa, and a pioneer of the Lost World literary genre.