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Editorial Review Book Description
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A classic novel of adventure with a tinge of fantasy, as a princess skilled in the mystical arts seeks to conquer India
King--of the Khyber Rifles, as Mundy's third novel, is the first work to reveal the unique talent and archetypes that would emerge throughout his oeuvre.Mundy imagines a set of incredible places, situations, and characters, using all of the imagination of which he was capable at the time across such topics as the army, the secret service, a powerful woman, hidden caves, secret wisdom, a mad mullah, war, and indigenous peoples.King--of the Khyber Rifles has attained a certain classic status through his arrangement of these plot elements into mythic form.(To read more about Mundy's writing career, see my book, Talbot Mundy: Philosopher of Adventure, by Brian Taves.)
The unusual name of Mundy's hero, Athelstan King, is an inversion of the name and title of the tenth century ruler who became the first Saxon to govern all of England.Creating the English civil service, King Athelstan established legal codes and led a victory over an alliance of Norse, Scots, and Strathclyde Britons invading England.Like his namesake, Mundy's hero saves India from a foreign invasion brewing in the Khinjan Caves beyond the Khyber, which Yasmini hopes to lead.
Mathematics is the key to King's character; he relies on its logic and immutability to both govern his actions and resist Yasmini.He also studies medicine for relaxation, allowing him to adopt the disguise of the Indian physician ("hakim"), Kurram Khan.The country is as much his own as if he belonged to her indigenous races.Like Yasmini, with her background of both Russian and Indian ancestry, but reared in India, King is also a child of the country, despite being of English blood.
King is ready to lay down his life to preserve the peace of India, to prevent India from becoming a new front in World War I.Yet, from the outset of King--of the Khyber Rifles, Mundy demonstrated his increasing habit of reversing the imperialist presuppositions of colonial adventure.Unlike most previous chroniclers of British India, Mundy takes his hero well beyond the territorial and spiritual realms of English control.King provides a surrogate for the white, Western reader into a land far beyond their knowledge or domain, where all characters and power are in the hands of Moslem Indians.King's adventure in the Khyber Pass and Khinjan Caves is at once both a patriotic mission and a journey of metaphysical discovery, an initiation.
Within the Khinjan Caves, Yasmini has discovered the sleepers, a legend known to the hillmen as "the Heart of the Hills," the remarkably well-preserved corpses of a forgotten Roman warrior and the woman who inspired his brief conquest of the East.Their physical resemblance to Yasmini and King is uncanny.Yasmini hopes to use the legend of the "Heart of the Hills" to convince the hillmen that she and King are reincarnations of the dead pair, ready to resume their conquest.In this way Mundy also begins the theme of reincarnation in his writing, while not yet suggesting his actual belief in the phenomenon.Through a magical crystal, King and Yasmini are able to see events in the lives of the "sleepers."Previously, Yasmini has read King's thoughts, yet Mundy handles both these fantastic elements in a restrained, spare, and realistic manner.
In the test of wills between Yasmini and King, he maintains the greater self-mastery.Both are reluctant to admit their increasing love for one another, which would compromise their respective missions.Just as Yasmini has been unable to kill King, despite his interference in her plans, King is barely able to resist her spell.He is unable to harm her and indeed hopes for a conclusion that will allow him to serve her.There can be no surrender into the arms of the other for either King or Yasmini.King cannot be said to have triumphed over her, because to preserve the status quo is a far different task from Yasmini's dream of reviving an empire.Hence, even in defeat Yasmini retains her imperiousness, while in victory King retains his dignity and humility.
Throughout King--of the Khyber Rifles, Mundy turns conventional assumptions and metaphors on their head to reveal new perspectives, spanning the political to the sexual realm.All of the unexpected reversals and multiple roles of the hero and heroine add depth to both the plot and the leads.This reaches its apex with a major character, Rewa Gunga, who early in the novel King had anxiously suspected of being one of Yasmini's past or present lovers.Instead, Rewa Gunga is revealed as Yasmini herself in disguise.Just as Yasmini had been hired by the British to defuse a rebellion she was leading, and King went into Khinjan as an Indian, now Yasmini is disclosed as one of her own supporting characters.
Although some of the experiences of King and Yasmini resemble those of Ayesha, "She-who-must-be-obeyed," in Haggard's She, and its prequel Ayesha, the style and interpretation are different.Both Haggard and Mundy use a white man's journey to a remote area, where both Ayesha and Yasmini reside in underground caves.Unlike Ayesha's other-worldliness, and ties to ancient times, Yasmini is no superwoman who has overcome mortality to live on through the centuries.Instead she is a 20th century woman, whose dreams would only be possible in the present and whose interest in the past is the power it can give her today.
Mundy's style is elliptical and oblique, in a natural rather than affected manner, with numerous arresting juxtapositions, such as his summation of the Khyber as "haunted after dark by the men whose blood-feuds are too reeking raw to let them dare go home and for whom the British hangman very likely waits a mile or two farther south."The book is also full of telling details that add a sense of authenticity, despite the likelihood that they came largely from Mundy's imagination.
Mundy is one of the best!!!!!!!
King of the Khyber Rifles (KOTKR) is just one of the great books that Talbot Mundy wrote.It was one of his first books and one of his best.This book and many of his others not only inspired other early writers like Robert E Howard but they also inspired more modern authors.In Robert Heinlein's Glory Road, Heinlein refers to Tros of Samothrace (a Mundy character).S. M. Stirling in Peshawar Lancers is obviously paying tribute to Mundy and other pulp writers of the time.Fritz Leiber (look up author on amazon.com if you are unaware of this science fiction and fantasy author's work.His "Fafhred and the Grey Mouser" series is on a par with Conan.) wrote an entire essay on how the "Tros of Samothrace" was one of his favorite set of books to read. If you haven't read any Mundy books yet, KOTKR and the Tros of Samothrace series are the best ones to start with.My comparision of Mundy and Kipling is that Kipling wrote from the typical British Colonialist's point of view.Mundy not only loved India, he "lived" India and Mundy's books reflect this. (Sidebar note of interest - Mundy hated being compared to Kipling.He preferred that his writing be compared to H. R. Haggard.) And if that wasn't enough, Mundy's chief characters (King, Jimgrim and Tros) all have a depth of intellect not seen in most of today's writing.Also many of Mundy's books have a surprising amount of mysticism and spirituality that adds immensely to the allure and intrigue of the storyline.
Like the Kyber Pass?Don't pass this one up
I couldn't agree more with the earlier reviewer.Mundy is one of my favorite 'adventure' novelists, and this is one of his better works.He's almost forgotten today, but as a pulp writer he kept many on the edge oftheir seats 60 years ago.If you like E.R. Burroughs, Sax Rohmer or RobertE. Howard, this is one you shouldn't miss (Howard based one of hischaracters, 'Francis X Gordon on Mundy's King)If you liked R. Kiplings'Kim'...imagine Kim grown up.Exotic love interest, intrique,a keen eyefor native customs of 100 years ago, swords and blazing pistols, charginglancers on a path 6 feet wide, with death inches away over the edge 3000feet to the canyon below...'King, of the Khyber Rifles' is about a Britishofficer involved in the 'mysticism' of then-forbidden Tibet, includesfrequent skirmishes with skulking mountain warriors, the old 'keeping theKhyber pass open' ploy, oh just read it.Mix up a peg of whiskey-soda, andescape the mundane last years of the 20th century.You can't go wrong withTalbot Mundy.
Wow!
Imagine Kipling writing about India... now imagine the same stories as rewrittten by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but an ERB that actually sounds as if he's been in the places he's writing about. And all the detail of a GeorgeMacdonald Fraser novel... Then you throw in some mystic stuff that makesWilliam S. Burroughs sound illiterate, add a pinch of "Boys OwnStories" or "Biggles" or whatever then light a match... thisis one amazing novel, it really is.
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