Karl May (1842–1912)

So this is an interesting one. Basically its a pulp adventure story, complete with betrayals, wars, rebellions, secret tunnels, death traps, princess-like-figures etc. but crossed with a political and religious allegory.
Pulp adventure fiction and religious allegory are not two things one tends to see a lot in the same place :) .

Style-wise it feels about half-way between H. Rider Haggard and Edgar Rice Burroughs. Also a lot of the story involves trying to convert a ruler to being nice, and show more so it starts to feel a bit like 'A Christmas Carol' in places.

The basic plot is that the country of Ardistan is about to wage war on Djinnistan and the Galadriel-esque ruler of a neighbouring country wants to stop the war. So she sends two agents to infiltrate Ardistan and find a means of doing so.

All sorts of religions are represented in the book and it mostly seems like its tolerating all of them but the author can't help letting his christian leanings get the best of him at times.
Also the way the plot progresses you start to see that our heroes are only a small part of what seems like almost a CIA plot to deal with Ardistan. I think modern readers might well question some of this interference in a foreign country however well intentioned.

Its an odd duck of a novel, at its heart its still a decent bit of adventure fiction but the religious preaching and pulpy adventure don't always sit well together.

Also due to the religious nature of the work there is a certain amount of predestination and Deux Ex-Machina's about. However there almost always is with these kinds of adventure stories and i've seen many, Many worse uses of such elements in other pulp adventures :) . show less

An adventure set in the US western frontier, written by a European had not visited the area. But still somehow pretty good, despite now being a little dated and more than a little racist in parts because of that datedness. The bad guys are carituristically so, good guys are in the same vein, and the action is simple but fun. It gets a lower grade because the translation was kind of awful, as it seems to me.

This is a decent Wild West novel by an author from Germany named Karl May - who never visited the West. Winnetou writes in the typical long-winded nineteenth century manner - his characters are by and large stock characters, and in need of heeding Polonius's advice in Hamlet: brevity is the soul of wit. May admires those Indians who are noble savages, but intimates they would do better for themselves if they latched on to true Christianity and adopted the trappings of civillization.

More than 30 years after the last time I read Karl May, fond memories of his North African/Middle Eastern stories made me pick up this book, which I hadn't read before.

It was pleasant enough, exotic, colourful, and obviously somewhat dated. More than once, I found it tiresomely repetitive: The main character making friends through his superior European skills; his stalking his foes and listening in on their conversations; an annoying comic relief sidekick who keeps foiling his master's show more perfect plans through his incompetence, again and again. Still, pleasant enough; I'm going to read the two follow-up books at some time. show less