Ayesha: The Return of She
Written by H. Rider Haggard
Narrated by B.J. Harrison
3.5/5
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About this audiobook
H. Rider Haggard
H. Rider Haggard (1856–1925) was an English adventure novelist. Haggard studied law, but rather than pursuing a legal career took a secretarial position in what is now South Africa. His time there provided the inspiration for some of his most popular novels, including She (1887), an early classic of the lost world fantasy genre and one of the bestselling books of all time.
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Reviews for Ayesha
87 ratings5 reviews
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5I read this long ago, so my recollection is vague, but I believe I found it less satisfying than the first volume in the "She" series. It has Ayesha reborn in Central Asia, which Haggard did not, I think, know so well as he did Africa from personal experience.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Ayesha, known as She-Who-Must-Be-Obeyed, first appeared in serial form from 1896 to 1897 in the novel She. Along with King Solomon's Mines, She is Haggard's most popular and famous novel. Ayesha is one of the awesome, kick-ass woman characters in Victorian literature, and I rated Wisdom's Daughter, the later written prequel set in Ancient Egypt five stars. I loved that book even more than the original She. However, I do not think The Return of She is as entrancing as those two books. It's a lot better than the third book She and Allan though (where Ayesha encountered Allan Quartermain of King Solomon's Mines. If you're a fan of Ayesha, and I am, this is enjoyable though. Great adventure, great fantasy--a genre that owes a great debt to Haggard. I'm not going to claim that Haggard even at his best is the same order of classic as the best by Charles Dickens, the Brontes, George Eliot or Thomas Hardy. But like Arthur Conan Doyle or Robert Louis Stevenson or Rudyard Kipling, Haggard really could spin a good yarn.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The less well known and less successful sequel to Rider Haggard's classic. There is not much here that is new in terms of plot, though Ayesha is depicted even more eloquently as a divine (or satanic?) being with potential mastery over not just the whole world, but seemingly the whole universe. The book is very well written and the author's command of language is superb. Worth looking out for if you have read and liked the original (though I HATE the cover of the Pulp Fictions edition).
- Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5This is the sequel to "She," which Haggard published in 1905, 18 years after the first book.
Although the title character seemed pretty definitively dead after the first book, still, she had vowed to return with her dying words, and, since then the characters of the beautiful young Leo and his mentor Dr. Horace Holly, have been wandering through Asia, seeking spiritual enlightenment, knowledge - and the return of that supernaturally beautiful immortal woman.
It wouldn't be much of a story if she didn't come back in some form - and, of course, she does.
The book is relatively free of the overtly offensive stereotypes and racial issues that were rather obtrusive in the first book, although it is still decidedly non-feminist, from a modern perspective - but in my perception, the Buddhist monks of "Ayesha" get a fairer (and more respectful) shake than the African cannibals of "She."
Overall, an entertaining adventure story, mixed with a deal of philosophy that ranges from interesting to annoying, depending...
Still, definitely worth reading... it was funny, because although some of the writing in this book did feel dated at times, it reminded me more of adventure-fantasy from the 70's than something more than half a century older. - Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Haggard published this sequel to She in 1905 eighteen years after the original and it follows a fairly similar format. The editor (the man responsible for getting She published receives another mystery package: It is a manuscript written by Mr Horace Holly about the further adventures of himself and his ward Leo Vincey. Both men are obsessed by their previous encounter with She-who-must-be-obeyed and even though they saw her reduced to a hideous monkey like creature after bathing in the flame of eternal youth in the previous novel, they have been searching for her ever since. Leo Vincey the ward and lover of She has had a vision that induces the two men to search for her in the mountains of Tibet. We pick up the story when the two men at last start picking up rumours of a powerful queen that lives in the unexplored lands beyond the furthest peaks of the Himalayan mountains.It is not until halfway through the book that we meet She, but in the meantime Leo and Holly become virtual prisoners of the Khania yet another beautiful queen who falls in love with Leo. The Khania is a mortal enemy of the priestess of the mountain who is reputed to have supernatural powers and who seems to foot the bill for She-who-must-be-obeyed. Haggard does an excellent job of relating the adventures of Leo and Holly as they battle through a hostile environment in search of what they believe to be their destiny. A hair- raising climb down an icy precipice, a pitched battle with a savage tribe and a fight to the finish with the death-hounds make this first part of the novel read like an adventure story. There is a change of pace when Ayesha appears and the pageantry and ritual that featured in the first novel are given full rein here, as Haggard describes the betrothal ceremony of She and Leo against the backdrop of a live volcanic crater. The portentousness of the scene is matched by some of Haggard's most portentous writing and this tends to get a little repetitive and overblown. She-who-must-be-obeyed has become even more powerful as she threatens to rule the world, but she does not lose her sense of being a woman in love, even if some of the eroticism of the first book has been lost. There is some discussion of how an absolute monarch might rule her subjects fairly and utopian ideals are broached, however the cruel and vindictive nature of She always seems to bubble just below the surface and this is what makes Haggard's creation something special, the continuous battle of wills between herself and the somewhat priggish Leo creates the tension that drives this story. There is of course a showdown with Khania and Leo once again finds himself having to make impossible choices. There is less science fiction in this sequel than in the original novel, as less stress is given to the "land that time forgot" elements of the story and although there is the making of a radioactive material in Ayesha's laboratory, one gets the feeling from Haggard that he did not quite know what to do with this idea and it soon drifts out of the main story line. I enjoyed the novel, but it does not have quite the same thrill as the original and this is because of the similarity of the two tales. A three star read then for lovers of Ayesha.