Customer Reviews

Brood of the Witch-Queen

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Sax Rohmer is one of my guilty pleasures. He may not be politically correct, but he really knew how to pack atmosphere and suspense into what were essentially written movie serials. The Fu Manchu stories are great fun, but his absolute best is 'Witch Queen'. A friend told me years ago that this was the scariest book he had ever read and I have to agree with him. This is easily the eeriest book I have ever read. And when the characters start crawling around in the pyramid of Meydum...well! The claustrophgobia goes up by a factor of ten. If you want a great scary read (and want to know where the inspiration for Indiana Jones probably came from) please, don't be put off by what may sound like a silly title - buy the book, put your feet up and scare yourself senseless!

"It was a bat, a fairly large one and a clot of blood marked the place where its head had been."
The most gripping adventure story I've read in some time. More thrilling than the Indiana Jones movies; If Spielberg hasn't carefully studied this, he should! I especially liked the circa 1918 view of the occult sciences, and their practitioners. Rohmer creates a consistent and creepy supernatural world.

Rohmer's works are mysteriously absent from my entire county library system, but are thankfully back in print.

Sax Rohmer's books are great, and Brood of the Witch Queen is no exception. Loved these when I was a kid. However, when you're buying, check the edition and publisher carefully. The version of "Brood of the Witch Queen" published by General Books LLC is a poor quality, automated reproduction with no index, no illustrations and quite a number of typos.

To quote a few specifics from the publishers web site:
"We created your book using OCR software that includes an automated spell check. Our OCR software is 99 percent accurate if the book is in good condition. However, with up to 3,500 characters per page, even one percent can be an annoying number of typos....

After we re-typeset and designed your book, the page numbers change so the old index and table of contents no longer work. Therefore, we usually remove them. Since many of our books only sell a couple of copies, manually creating a new index and table of contents could add more than a hundred dollars to the cover price....

Our OCR software can't distinguish between an illustration and a smudge or library stamp so it ignores everything except type. We would really like to manually scan and add the illustrations. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies....

We created your book using a robot who turned and photographed each page. Our robot is 99 percent accurate. But sometimes two pages stick together. And sometimes a page may even be missing from our copy of the book. We would really like to manually scan each page and buy multiple copies of each original. But many of our books only sell a couple of copies....."

The owners of General Books LLC, VDM Publishing, are flooding Amazon with these low quality publications (450,000 listed under General Books LLC) and, unfortunately, many of them have the reviews associated with the original or with better quality imprints associated with them. While the price is at least reasonable, the product description is totally misleading for the buyer that's not aware of this publisher.

IMHO this is unethical marketing.

Good pulp adventure story that spans from the homes of London's elite to the ancient pyramids of Egypt. Contains many vivid and exciting scenes. What begins as a murder mystery turns into the hunt for a diabolical villian with supernatural powers. Fans of the Indiana Jones movies, and of the recent remake of "The Mummy", would probably like this book. The only thing that spoilt the fun for me was the abrupt ending. But, it's still worth reading.

In a lot of ways, this book is a throwback to another era. The damsels in distress, the robust and portly good guys, booze and tobacco for strength, and all of the crusty conventions are here. If a movie, at times this one feels like it would star Vincent Price late at night, or on a Saturday afternoon. Underneath the crust of stale conventions, though, beats a heart of originality. For good stretches, the book feels like "The Mummy" movies, and in other stretches like Indiana Jones. Quite a lot of it feels like a Sherlock Holmes story. Sometimes it's a reminder about Dracula movies as well. However, Harry Potter seems to me to be the most apt comparison. The heros, while apparently physicians or reporters, are in reality practitioners of White Magic to defend against the villain. In addition, there's an underlying knowledge of Hermetic philosophy on display here at times - sadly emerging from the villian's mouth in its most complete form. Now, that's really interesting. This book in fact seems to reflect several concepts from the early 20th century that had a big impact - including the importance of "Will," vibrations, and other concepts. Possibly, this book could have been something really cool. The early-20th-century British writing can be pretty stiff. Still, it's interesting historically, and is a page-turner.

Let me start by saying that I gave this book three stars because it was well written and the story somewhat held my interest. I didn't find it scarry or spooky- just boring. I felt no investment in the characters, and the book lacks any twists or turns. I am a quick reader, but this dragged on..... The kindle has opened me up to many of the classics, and overall I have been pleased with my selections.

Who is Antony Ferrara?
Get ready for a great read. Sax Rohmer makes the unnatural and supernatural too natural. As we try to discover who Antony Ferrara is before his unique talents dispatch us. The Book is like a Hollywood Cliffhanger. Jest as soon as we have Antony boxed in literally and figuratively he escapes to create more havoc. Fantastical magical beings and evils appear everywhere. However, are they really imagination or a form of hypnosis? No, they are real and if you look up the books and other materials, in this story, you will realize that Sax Rohmer is writing of places he has been and books he has read not fantasies. He writes so well that you feel that you are there or at least watching a movie. Speaking of movies how did this one get away.
The story ends too soon and very abruptly.

I had the kindle version and the only annoying thing is periodically the is a number in a bracket on the page as [32] and the text-to-speak reads it.

Collectanea Hermetica

Practical Psychomancy and Crystal Gazing

Mummies! Vampires! Magic Beetles! Hypnotism! Bats! A "Polish Jewess" Sorceress! (No, I'm not making that up!)

This early-20th century thriller packs in loads of deliriously silly supernatural thrills. The writing style is a little dated (this was written around World War I), the characters are all cardboard, and the flaccid ending is a bit of a disappointment, but the action rarely stops and, overall, this is a fun read. Rohmer is best remembered for his Fu Manchu series of books (forerunners of the James Bond series, in a way), but this stand-alone novel, featuring an ancient Egyptian curse at loose in London (with a side trip to Cairo), is quite a good read.

Brood of the Witch-Queen, is one action packed novella.

Considering the relative small length, you get a ton of horror, death, disgust and all those great things that keep you up late at night.

Get the free edition, and keep the lights on. Unless you like grave beetles.

A wonderful black magic/Egyptian novel that takes place during the early 20th during the height of the Egyptology crazy. For the most part the story in this book is fantastic as the adventure of the main characters takes them from London to Cairo has they chase down and ancient evil force of magic.

There are only a couple of hiccups that make the story less than perfect. First, the character development seems less than realistic. The son in the book never seems to fully grasp the danger of the magic he is in, charging full on into situations despite the repeated instances of it upon him. And the father keeps resisting to explain the happenings to those around all the characters for some unknown reason, just throwing off an excuse that it might somehow upset people.

All of that is minor though beside the major failing of the ending. After traveling half the globe with the characters and building incredible suspense until the last page, the very last paragraph of the book completely destroys the ending and all of the suspense built throughout the book.

This book was all ready to be placed on one of my favorite of all time lists, but the ending blew it. I highly still recommend it for a read though if you are looking for a romp through Egypt, magic and evil.