Caves of Terror

Yasmini #6

by Talbot Mundy

Talbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon) (1879-1940) was an English writer who wrote under the pseudonym Walter Galt. His most famous book is King of the Khyber Rifles: A Romance of Adventure (1916), which is set in India under British Occupation. He wrote many other books and stories, including Hira Singh: When India Came to Fight in Flanders (1918) and a number of stories about Tros of Samothrace, a Greek freedom fighter who aided Britons and Druids in their fight against Julius Caesar. In 1919, Mundy serialized On the Trail of Tippoo Tib, a novel about treasure hunting and ivory poaching in East Africa, which Mundy always claimed was the most autobiographical of his novels. His other works include Rung Ho! (1914), The Winds of the World (1915), The Ivory Trail (1919), Told in the East (1920), The Eye of Zeitoon (1920), The Guns of the Gods (1921), The Bubble Reputation (1923), Caves of Terror (1922), and The Lion of Petra (1922).

Genres: Adventure, Historical Fiction, Fiction, Pulp, Fantasy

148 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1922

About the author

Talbot Mundy (born William Lancaster Gribbon) was an English-born American writer of adventure fiction. Based for most of his life in the United States, he also wrote under the pseudonym of Walter Galt. Best known as the author of King of the Khyber Rifles and the Jimgrim series, much of his work was published in pulp magazines.

Reviews

[K.J. Charles]

Inexcusable Orientalist sub-Buchan tosh, which pretty much goes without saying if you know the author, but lots of interest as well, including the fact that amid the tosh is an unequivocal message from the British hero (written 1924) that Britain should get the hell out of India. ("Self-government... I've been working for that ever since I cut my eye-teeth. So has every other British officer and civil servant who has any sense of public duty.")

Also an intriguing reflection, when the narrator is getting badly treated by the villain's henchwomen:

I think it was simply sex-venom--the half-involuntary vengeance that the underdog inflicts on the other when positions are reversed. When India's women finally break purdah and enter politics openly, we shall see more cruelty and savagery, for that reason, than either the French or Russian terrors had to show.

BRB off to perpetrate sex-venom.

[Craig · Rating 3 out of 5]

Talbot Mundy (1879 - 1940) was a very prolific adventure writer who was cited as an influence by many more modern writers including Fritz Leiber, Robert A. Heinlein, Andre Norton, C.L. Moore, and Robert E. Howard. His best-known novel was probably King- of the Khyber Rifles (the first of several Jimgrim/Ramsden/Yasmini books, including this one), closely followed by his Tros of Samothrace series. Caves of Terror first appeared as The Grey Mahatma in the pulp magazine Adventure in 1922, and was published in book form in 1924 with "A Book for Boys" on the cover below a picture of an Egyptian-looking pyramid, which is curious since the book is entirely set in and is about India. It's a strange tale about Athelstan King, formerly of the British Secret Service, and American agent Jeff Ramsden, meeting with Indian leader Yasmini in order to debate the idea of Indian self-rule. Mundy's characters over-lapped a lot between books and African/Asian locales. King and Ramsden go on a lengthy mystical tour of apparently psychic supernatural wonders below the citadel where Yasmini is voluntarily imprisoned. Some of the discussion gets a bit too drawn-out and remains inconclusive, but the adventure sequences are engaging. It seems quite dated and somewhat colonially racist, though Mundy seems to maintain that the U.K. needs to withdraw from India as soon as possible. I've read a bit of Mundy before, but always preferred other historical/adventure writers of the time such as Haggard, Kipling, Rohmer, etc.

[Perry Whitford · Rating 5 out of 5]

In this adrenaline pumping edition to Mundy's interwoven adventure series' set in the Orient, the idealistic ex-British Secret Service agent Athelstan King teams up with American fixer Jeff Ramsden to take on adversaries both old and new.

The old for is the ambitious and alluring Princess Yasmini, who plans to use the dark secrets she has learnt from the Tirthanker priests to overthrow the West. After the description of her erotic dance I'd say she should be given whatever she wants.

The new villain is the Gray Mahatma himself, formidable prophet of the Kali-Yug, or age of darkness, who threatens to unleash his ancient sciences upon the British Empire unless India is granted independence.

The Mahatma initially illustrates his uncanny powers through a vice-like handshake, sitting and standing 'as if an unseen hand had taken him by the hair and lowered him gradually,' and projecting his voice effortlessly.

These are merely parlour tricks compared to what King and Ramsden discover when the Gray Mahatma leads them through a panther's cage, a hall of cobras, and a tank full of muggers (alligators), all of whom the holy man appears to command, and into a cave of wonders culminating in a seriously grotesque torture chamber.

Mundy certainly showed the Amazing Tales brigade how to write this kind of story. No purple prose, no overstrained metaphors, just good clean hair-raising spectacle presented with an economy of verbiage.

It's pulp fiction, it's utter nonsense, it's pure entertainment from start to finish.

[Paul Cornelius · Rating 2 out of 5]

With Caves of Terror, Talbot Mundy brings a rather dissatisfying end to the Yasmini series. Athelstan King is back once again to renew his complicated rivalry with Yasmini, who, however, disappears for most of the book. Instead, King and his American associate are caught in a labyrinth of caverns underneath a secret Hindu sect's temple. There, they find many wondrous and fearful things and must work to keep them out of Yasmini's hands, as she aspires to worldwide domination.

If this seems all action and no thought, it is. If this seems more like pulp fiction for teenage boys, it is. If this seems too programmed and exploitive of the other books in the series, yes, it is. But at least Akbar the temperamental elephant returns to the series to turn over carts, scare people, and charge automobiles. Maybe Mundy should have written an Akbar series?

[Alan Loewen · Rating 3 out of 5]

A Rather Odd Little Tale

Two Englishmen find themselves in an occult power struggle between two factions for the full independence of India from English rule. They move from moments of capture to moments of freedom. In the end, the traditions and mores of Indian culture prove too great and the two factions fail, but not before the narrator and his English friend have seen a darker side of Hindu magic.

The story actually makes me more curious about the author who appears to write with some authority about India. I think his life’s story would be more fascinating that this and other pulp stories he wrote.

[Bish Denham · Rating 3 out of 5]

Not one of Mundy's better stories. But still, I love his writing and the philosophy/metaphysics he throws in.
For example:
She knows the smell of dawn at midnight.
...some telegraph wires on which birds of a thousand colors perch with an air of perpetual surprise.
They were like living shadows, and they danced the way the shadows of the branches do on a jungle clearing when a light breeze makes the trees laugh.
All energy is vibrations; yet that is only one fraction of the truth. All is vibration. The universe consists of nothing else.
Anger is impotence.

[Jim · Rating 4 out of 5]

The beginning was a little weak, but it picked up and turned out to be quite enjoyable.

[Jim · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am reading the ebook version obtained from Gutenberg.org.