Descent From Xanadu

by Harold Robbins

Judd Crane's obsessive quest to defeat age and death takes him, and a beautiful, brilliant doctor, through the depths of a world of passion, luxury, and desperate intrigue

Genres: Fiction, Adventure, Erotica, Ebooks, Romance, Sexuality

335 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1984

About the author

Born as Harold Rubin in New York City, he later claimed to be a Jewish orphan who had been raised in a Catholic boys home. In reality he was the son of well-educated Russian and Polish immigrants. He was reared by his pharmacist father and stepmother in Brooklyn.

His first book, Never Love a Stranger (1948), caused controversy with its graphic sexuality. Publisher Pat Knopf reportedly bought Never Love a Stranger because "it was the first time he had ever read a book where on one page you'd have tears and on the next page you'd have a hard-on".

His 1952 novel, A Stone for Danny Fisher, was adapted into a 1958 motion picture King Creole, which starred Elvis Presley.

He would become arguably the world's bestselling author, publishing over 20 books which were translated into 32 languages and sold over 750 million copies. Among his best-known books is The Carpetbaggers, loosely based on the life of Howard Hughes, taking the reader from New York to California, from the prosperity of the aeronautical industry to the glamour of Hollywood.

Reviews

[Tracy P. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wow...misogyny, sexual deviancy, narcissism and some of the worst in mankind is put under a glaring spotlight - with NO respite- in this emotionally disturbing Robbins novel.

[Laur · Rating 3 out of 5]

tl;dr review: don't read this for the sex, you'll be bored out of your mind trying to find 'the good bits'. read it because it's funny, and when you're done imagine how it would have been different had it been written by Michael Crichton.

long review:
This is how I imagine Harold Robbins outlined Descent from Xanadu on scrap paper:
__________
book: model on The Andromeda Strain but forget once in a while that you aren't writing erotica for personal use and shoehorn in some male fantasies and drug use.

plot: the quest of one man to live forever via injections/therapy/withholding orgasm and or release of life force(?). mostly science but also some stuff about meditation and indian yogis. the doctor who pioneered the research should be a sweet old lady with very, very tenuous links to nazis and their experiments. it should take place in the decadent(extra decadent!) 1970's and be crammed full of cold-war intrigue. worry about the details later. side story about a shifty asian guy who wants to deal in opium. maybe some spies go down to cuba to sell some secret codes and almost see a donkey show but then someone gets shot?? it should have no bearing on the rest of the story and the opium and asian guy will be forgotten. start the book with lots of humorously dated and misogynistic sex scenes but then have several chapters of dense faux-hard-science with no banging in sight....at some point go new agey and talk about chakras and life force, the main character should sleep under a glass pyramid and have a harem of teenage girls dressed in white. (note: Howard Hughes fantasy stuff if he wasn't afraid of germs) that won't last too long. maybe at some point the main character will sneak into Hughes' bedroom and see him in a coma? oh well, back to the spies and mercenaries!

hero: Judd. should be a mix of Bruce Wayne(ultra wealthy, private jets etc, head of a massive corporation his father left him), James Bond(studly, sophisticated but all action, women women women), with a dash of Howard Hughes(growing eccentricities given free reign because of endless wealth). Wants to live forever. Favorite snack/pastime is a snort of lab-quality cocaine("a toot") chased with a cherry coke. Has this several times a day.

sidekick: small black guy named Fast Eddie who is only referred to by his full nickname("Fast Eddie") and his appearance(black guy). ostensibly a right-hand man but his sole function is to provide drugs and cherry coke to Judd and speculate about random women. he wears a vial of cocaine on a gold chain around his neck. Fast Eddie is "old Roscoe's grandson"...Roscoe was Judd's father's right hand man. This whole relationship and history should embody an amusingly dated and vaguely racist view of white & black. (picture Fast Eddie wearing a red leather jacket; a quiet Eddie Murphy)

main chick: 30 year old woman- Sofia Ivancich. attractive eastern european blank slate. establish early in the book(before page 10) that she "is always wet" and later explain that she has a "psychological" problem she wants to solve: she gets turned on instantly, all the time, the result being multiple orgasms. apparently this male fantasy is unwanted and it opens the door to lots of private jet sex with drugs between her and Judd- also some sexy time with a female stewardess but who knows what lesbians do with each other so it will just get mentioned in passing. she begins as a sex object and possible spy but gets less sexy and more boring and matronly as the book progresses. also, this astoundingly bizarre scene: Sofia needs to be snuck out of a Japanese hospital so they perform cosmetic procedures and apply makeup to make her look like a black woman. a giggling Japanese nurse will recommend buying "ass falsies" at Frederick's of Hollywood because "Black girls' asses have a bigger shelf that makes them move differently." cut to Fast Eddie, who approves. Really.

the last few chapters should gel into a breakneck plot jumble about nuclear facilities and the kidnapping of a character who has only been mentioned twice. also there's the indian yogi guy again and a secret document is recorded onto a reel from a supercomputer. it's a race against the clock!

this book is gonna be great.
__________

All in all this was fun and occasionally weird, when I wasn't faintly bored by the pages and pages of business talk/empire building. It's an odd time capsule of 80's beach reading that veers often into action and sex(like older brother The Pirate) and even leads you to think it might dabble with sci-fi..but misfires. Compared to The Pirate, Descent seems cramped and almost sloppy- not written as badly as it seems written hastily. Harold Robbins clearly wrote with zeal and enthusiasm, but I imagine him getting sidetracked by his own fantasies and tiring out after sating them...only to come raring back four chapters later. Action! Science! Sex! Administrative meetings. Anticlimactic flashbacks. Opulent lifestyle stuff. Drugs! Action! Sex! and so on.

I feel like I'm coming off as harsh, but it's not exactly a good book. It's a FUN book and I may even read it again in a few years. Can you say that about many recent pulp paperbacks?

[Gloria · Rating 1 out of 5]

UGH.

[Tom · Rating 1 out of 5]

A real Robbins protagonist in this one: he's a busy businessman who only does business. Everyone else is thinking too small, he has time only for his grand and secret agenda and his laundry list of sexual hangups and disfunctions. What does our hero strive for while forsaking all other pursuits? Nothing less than immortality. Will he learn anything along the way? Allegedly.

Unfortunately, this is another Robbins venture where any semblance of a typical plot is sidelined in favor of the psychology of the Great Man. Not even the psychology though, because we mostly observe him through the wake he cuts through the world, and even that is really only measured in endless scenes of people being surprised at what he's getting up to next. More often than not, what he's doing next is coke. Jeez there's a lot of causal snorting going on. Is it a thematic element, a genre convention, or is it merely that Robbins was a successful man in the 80s?

Everything is permitted our hero by merit of his Greatness and Wealth and Power. This is Robbins's take on a "what shall it profit a man if he gain the whole world but lose his soul" narrative, but by the ending it's clear that Robbins has no answers to offer, just a string of lines, bumps, and hits.

[Renata · Rating 1 out of 5]

Team this book was the worst I’ve read this year. It made no sense and was so unenjoyable for no reason. Literally my stubborn view on quitting books is all the kept me going and I finally have to admit defeat. Why suffer for something that isn’t important and is written by a crazy man. Anyways there goes two weeks of my life FOR WHAT.

[Gary Turner · Rating 4 out of 5]

Just read it, you will enjoy.

[Amanda Alexandre · Rating 1 out of 5]

I'm abandoning Harold Robbins for good.

The beauty of enjoying cheesy books is that, when you're not liking them, you can easily replace them by another cheesy book.

[Zach Leete · Rating 3 out of 5]

To set the stage for this review, I randomly picked this up at a thrift store in Southwest Florida because I thought it would look nice on our bookshelf (I own the white hardcover variant that has a woman's ghostly visage with only her eyes, nose, and mouth showing. It is, admittedly, a great cover). I purchased this not knowing anything about Harold Robbins or his body of work. I recollect that at the time, I scanned a few pages to see what the story was about. It seemed pulpy. A rich idiot with a big plane and a drug problem sought immortality. "Cool," I thought, "Maybe I'll read this on a plane eventually to kill a few hours."

Fast forward to 2026, I'm perusing my bookshelf after being depressed by Cyril Pedrosa's "Portugal" so I look through our collection of "novels we don't take too seriously" and give "Descent from Xanadu" another quick scan. It seems like the sort of fun and stupid novel that one can blast through in a few days to jumpstart their reading journey for the year. As such, I decided to give this one a spin.

Wow. This was somehow both exactly what I was expecting and not at all what I was expecting. It affirmed a few things that didn't really need affirming in my life...like the books my aunt was reading at the beach when I was a kid were way smuttier than ever imagined. Airport shlock leans into its shlockiness far more than I anticipated. It's actually kind of impressive if you've never pulled on that thread personally. Reading this also affirmed that our society has really come a long way in depressing chauvinism in the arts. Also, were men having sex in the 70s/80s? The way Robbins writes about intimacy is pure lunacy.

Anyway, I gave this 3 stars because the way Robbins juggles nearly every cliche from the 70s and 80s and somehow ties it together into a somewhat cohesive narrative is hilarious. This novel features a rich POS, a jumbo plane that doubles as a house, a Yugoslavian sexy doctor, cocaine everywhere, the KGB, the CIA (which is often paired with the IRS for some reason), the pursuit of immortality, genetic engineering, nuclear power, yoga and meditation, a "maharashi" character, guns that pop out of sleeves, frequent scenes of intimacy that occur out of thin air, a cult, and plenty more that I'm purposely leaving out of my review.

To be clear, this is neither a good story nor a well-written one. It is pure excess in every regard. "Descent from Xanadu" reads like something a trio of edgy 13/14-year-olds would brainstorm at a sleepover and later edited by a contract editor. And yet, I couldn't put this down (for better or worse), but I'm not sure if that says more about me or Harold Robbins. I don't plan on reading it again or reading any of Robbins' other works, but this will certainly be ingrained in my mind for a long time and referenced consistently.

Don't be afraid to have fun with this one.

[Agustín Fest · Rating 2 out of 5]

Este es uno de esos libros que se leen a escondidas. Me lo llevé a un Vips y de repente, encontré que la gente notaba (con distintas y variadas expreisiones) en la portada como una modelo ochentera se tapaba los senos con una manita. El sexo abunda, así como los chispazos sardónicos que se avienta el personaje u otros que están alrededor de él.

Judd Crane es un billonario que gasta toda su lana en buscar la inmortalidad. Maneja sus negocios (que son tan variados como sea lo que necesite en el momento) desde un avión personal (cierta reminiscencia a Cosmopolis de Don DeLillo, donde el yuppie maneja todo desde su limosina. Siempre en movimiento.)

Los personajes no dejan de meterse cocaína para volverse una especie de súper hombres: más rápidos, más atentos, más precisos, más aguantadores y con más ganas de coger. Judd Crane suele tomar coca cola con tantito polvo porque, bueno, según esto estaba tratando de tomar coca cola como en la fórmula original.

El primer libro es un festival de excesos. El segundo libro transcurre tres años después y Judd Crane me dio la impresión que se transformaba en una especie de Steve Jobs. Su búsqueda se transforma en un culto, sus oficinas se vuelven minimalistas, blancas y más limpias. La transformación -con todo y lo chafón que el libro pueda ser o... deba ser en apariencia-, del personaje me pareció muy interesante.

Sólo que los demás personajes que orbitan alrededor de Crane funcionan simplemente como circunstancias.

Al final, podemos decir que este libro es un placer culposo. Algo para entretenerse un par de horas o unos días.

[Devilsjourney · Rating 3 out of 5]

The storyline and characters for this book would have been brilliant, if not for Robbins' terribly cheesy "erotic scenes". He could have expanded upon Judd's search for immortality and taken us across the world. He could have come up with some fascinating science fiction, business/political conspiracies, and shown us more of Judd's character development.

But no. He did not. While all of the above was present to an extent, it was much weaker than it could have been.

The erotic scenes did not help the plot or the characters at all - they were just there. You could completely skip over them and not miss a beat of the main storyline (which was skimpier than it could have been, referring to the points made earlier). But due to the great non-erotic aspects, it's worth at least 2-3 stars. Probably 2, but I'm generous (hence the 3).

[Juan Pablo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A powerful man's search for inmortality

[Greg · Rating 3 out of 5]

embarrassingly trashy fun

[Janna · Rating 2 out of 5]

Tried to stay with it! Read half way through and just couldn't finish it! Had some very erotic parts, but just did not have much of a storyline for me.

[Connie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't get it... .??

[Kurt Reichenbaugh · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, who would have guessed, 50 years ago, that Harold Robbins would type a best seller about the sort of characters that now we'd all recognize as "the Epstein Class"? Yup, he did! Some time ago I picked up a handful of Robbins books from an old bookstore here in town and have slowly made my way through them. I got interested in reading his books because I remember in the 70s seeing them everywhere, always topping bestseller lists. The rep then was that they were all super sexed up and hot reading. Reading them now is a look at another time and place at least here in the states. What was it about them that sold so many copies and made Robbins a rich man? It's worth considering. I happen to like trashy fiction. And obviously so do millions of other readers. Had I read this 15 or 20 years ago I would have laughed at it and figured it for just another silly over-the-top trashy read, with kinky sex thrown in to keep the plot moving. His books used to be campy fun. But reading this one now was kind of depressing. Because it's really not so far-fetched anymore, given what we see in the news, online, on social media, and on and on and on ad nauseum.

The hero of this novel is Judd Crane, a multi-billionaire who travels around the world on his personal jets, seeking the "formula" for eternal life. Along the way he's joined by an over-sexed doctor named Sofia Ivancich who stays with him, ostensibly to perform periodic medical evaluations as he undergoes an experimental process to slow down physiological aging. Crane also has a personal assistant named Fast Eddie who is always handy with a supply of cocaine, called "a toot" by all our friends, for whenever anyone feels the need for a pick-me-up.

"Doctor Ivancich, would you like a toot?"

"Why thank you Fast Eddie, I'd love a toot."

Judd Crane, we're told, is a genius business guy, running various multi-billion dollar corporations with snappy phone calls and drug-fueled meetings, all the while judging every women he meets as a conquest, commenting on their looks, drinking Cherry Coke laced with cocaine, and asking any nurse who comes near him for a quick fuck. And when that's not enough he likes to sleep with teenage girls to experience the proper "yin-yang" thing. It would be a joke, you'd think, but today all that sounds like business as usual for the sorts of powerbrokers who would jump around a stage with chainsaws, dash off moronic tweets by the minute, punch down on others, wreck corporations, wreak chaos, destroy entire agencies for kicks, and then go fly off to resort islands for schoolboy "locker room" fun.

The plot just sort of meanders along. Judd and Sofia fly to Mexico to meet a reclusive and morphine addicted Howard Hughes, then fly to San Francisco, Judd carries on with the "eternal life" tests which make him sexually insatiable, surrounds himself with more teenage girls from Mauritius, orders people around just like any arrogant bigshot asshole, drinks cherry coke along with his toots, and maintains an attention span of a horny teenage boy. There is no point in the plot where he has to go through any danger or adversity. The worst thing that happens to him is that he can't achieve an orgasm now and then. There is a side plot about Soviet agents wanting to assassinate Sofia Ivancich but there again, no real danger because whenever she has to, she can just produce a gun and shoot someone. Problem solved and off for another toot. Anyway...yeah, like I said, I would have probably taken it for camp 15 or 20 years ago. But seeing the dopes with too much money and nothing else going for them skipping around the world making lives beneath them miserable, nope. No longer funny. Pick anyone of the jerkoffs we're inundated with now and yup...That's Judd Crane.

Robbins wrote this book at a time when he completely didn't give a shit about being a writer, other than what paycheck it could get him. Back in those days, we were told by gossip magazines that he was living the life of any one of the characters in his books. I have zero doubt he knew guys just like Judd Crane. Today, unfortunately, so do the rest of us.

[Maux Ochoa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Este es otro de los libros que leí totalmente a ciegas. Lo compré porque tenía en el título a Xanadú y me recordó a Ciudadano Kane, una de mis películas favoritas. No leí la sinopsis antes de leerlo y creo que fue un acierto.
Es importante decir que no tiene nada que ver con la película, aunque, su protagonista me recuerda un poco al creado por Orson Wells. Sobre la historia, se ambienta en la guerra fría y seguimos la ambición del hombre más rico del mundo para ser inmortal; en su búsqueda da con una científica rusa que vive en Yugoslavia que va bastante avanzada en el campo de la clonación celular -un proyecto que desarrolló por orden de Hittler-. El problema es que Crane es objeto de interés para el gobierno ruso por su cercanía e influencia en la política americana y también tienen bastante interés por hacerse con las notas del proyecto de longevidad.
El libro es corto y se lee muy rápido. El protagonista, Judd Crane, es un hombre totalmente reprochable, moralmente gris, misógino e insoportable; pero totalmente creíble y necesario para la historia; un personaje creado siguiendo los patrones de realidad y coherencia. Para mí el mayor punto fuerte de la historia. En cuanto a Sofía que vendría a ser una de las ayudantes de la doctora y super importante para el desarrollo de la trama, es un personaje femenino fuerte, ambivalente, ambiciosa y decidida. Ella hará lo que sea necesario para sobrevivir. Aprovecha y honra su sexualidad sin caer en la venta de su cuerpo.
El libro está plagado de escenas de acción muy bien ejecutadas, de personajes bien construidos y escenas muy bien documentadas.
Algo que me falló y por eso al final no son 5 estrellas es que de momentos se hacía pesado. Y las últimas 20 páginas me parecieron demasiado rápidas dejándome con varias incógnitas, resolviendo el problema de fondo de manera veloz e inconclusa.

[A.R. Yngve · Rating 1 out of 5]

Judged on its own terms, this book is awful. It has no redeeming qualities, not even as entertainment. I expected a trashy thriller - but I just got bored and disappointed.

The author Harold Robbins was once one of the top bestsellers in the world, with novels like THE CARPETBAGGERS - lurid tales about money, power and sex - daydreams of wordly success and excess.

Robbins tried to live as excessively as his fictional characters - and he used a lot of drugs. Incidentally, the rich protagonist in DESCENT FROM XANADU has two obsessions: finding immortality and cocaine...

Sounds like a thriller, right? Only it isn't.

Turns out the tycoon protagonist's drug habit is actually more important than becoming immortal. The plot literally stops in its tracks many times because he has to score cocaine.

The only friend (sort of) he has is his dealer. Seriously.

After a seemingly endless number of cocaine stops, the novel dimly recalls that the plot was supposed to be about a guy who tries to become immortal. It makes a mad rush for the ending, stumbles and falls flat on its face on the final page.

This is what happens when a writer's personal hangups (in this case drugs) are allowed to completely take over the narrative, without being questioned or challenged.

Readers: Avoid DESCENT FROM XANADU.
Writers: Read and learn. (And stay away from cocaine! )

If you do want a good trashy 80s read, try Jackie Collins instead.

[Saskia (Smitie) · Rating 2 out of 5]

Het hele boek viel erg tegen. Er zit een hoop onnodige erotica in, alsof de schrijver in ieder hoofdstuk iets van seks erin moet schrijven om het interessant te houden. Vooral de houding van Judd tegenover vrouwen (een speeltje dat je kan gebruiken wanneer je wilt) is niet meer van deze tijd. De rest is ook erg ongeloofwaardig en eindigt teleurstellend.

[christine lopez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Awsome reading

I love Harold Robbins. He is one of my favorite. Authors.I love his books. They are so well written. I was devastated at his passing many years ago. But I still read his books. And he is still alive to me in his writings.

[Gillian Baker · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent read

Remember reading this when I was young and really enjoyed it and still did this time unable to put down

[Macawley Brown · Rating 2 out of 5]

Hated this book- hard to follow at times and the characters were very unlike able

[Gracedih · Rating 1 out of 5]

Uhm. No comment

[Jamie Grefe · Rating 5 out of 5]

Rails of elite cool, lust, coke, and intrigue galore. And, at the heart of it all: deception, love, the vanity of becoming, and the haunting spectacle of death that lingers just down the road.

[Bob Box · Rating 3 out of 5]

Read in 1984. Richest man in the world seeks the answer to eternal life.

[Stefanie · Rating 1 out of 5]

This was so bad I gave up a third of the way through. I can only assume based on the text that Harold Robbins never met a woman. And if he did ever meet one, I can only offer them my condolences.

[Carol Fellenz · Rating 3 out of 5]

the story was about finding eternal life.

[Cara Byrne · Rating 1 out of 5]

I didn't finish this book. I read 80 pages and gave up. The raunchy bits were the only interesting bits in it. It was boring.

[Mona · Rating 3 out of 5]

It is fun to read something from the 1980's occasionally.