Customer Reviews

The Mask of Fu Manchu

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This book, #5 of 14 in the Fu Manchu series, is a direct continuation of the previous entry, "The Daughter of Fu Manchu." Thus, a reading of that earlier story is fairly essential when going into this one. Shan Greville again narrates, and all our old friends are back: Nayland Smith, Dr. Petrie, Orientalist Lionel Barton and his niece, Rima. Comm. Weymouth and Karameneh make only token appearances in this work. Thanks to the essential oil of a rare Burmese orchid, Dr. Fu has attained a new lease on life in this book, and is both stronger and more active than ever. You might call him a brand-new Fu! Fah Lo Suee, his evil but hot-blooded daughter, makes some nice eerie appearances in this tale, as well.
The story this time concerns Fu's attempts to steal the so-called relics of El Mokanna from Sir Lionel. These relics will enable him to foster an Islamic uprising that will sweep the world. The action jumps from Persia to Cairo, to adventure on the high seas and then back to jolly old London. Mixed in with the usual fast pace we are treated to Ogboni killers, mind-control drugs, dervishes, metal dissolvers, a "ghost mosque," and amnesia. One of the high points of the novel is a midnight ransom meeting with Dr. Fu Manchu in the heart of the Great Pyramid; a very memorable sequence indeed. Rohmer even manages to throw in a nice sentimental ending of sorts to this story, in which Fu gets to show what a classy dude he is capable of being. I am docking the book a star because several of the events are not explained (how did Fu get out of the Great Pyramid, anyway?), and because the writing in one or two scenes was a bit fuzzy (I still can't figure out that Ogboni spider-thread pendulum trick). Still, these are minor quibbles. This is essentially a mighty fun read, and a worthy addition to the Fu saga.

And a good thing, too. It somehow combines the Yellow Peril of the 1930s with height of purple prose.

The story starts after Van Berg, Greville, The Chief and their party have excavated the artifacts of long-gone and heretical Islamic sect. Once they located the wonderful works in gold and jewels - the only things that an archaeologist would care about, y'know - they pack them up to take back their civilized country. The silly wogs around there wouldn't really appreciate them the way a British orientalist would, so it's only proper. Oh, and they dynamite the reliquary on their way out. Once the gold's gone, the shrine is of no further interest, right? At least, not to anyone who matters. All in a day's work.

(Yes, little one, people used to write books like this. Not just books, but whole series of books. And people used to read them - and not squirm while they read.)

But that shadowy sect isn't as gone as Greville and the others might have hoped. That explosion at the tomb is taken to be the heresiarch's second coming, and all of the near East is rumbling with unrest. In mysterious and dangerous ferment, an even more mysterious and dangerous force appears: the invidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Implacably evil, but strictly moral according to his own dark code, he siezes upon this chance to bring the East back into world prominence. "The East," for current purposes, is a uniform blob including China, the parts of Turkey that don't wear neckties, the Muslim world, and just about anything else outside of Europe. Except Africa, of course, which doesn't really count for much no matter how you look at it.

(Yes, little one, people back then were just as deliberately ignorant of world geography and culture as now. Maybe, if such a thing were possible, even more so).

Only fast-thinking Nayland Smith can hope to outwit this mysterious Chinese genius, to defeat his world-spanning league of henchmen, to evade the mysterious mind-altering drugs from the Dr.'s mystical pharmacopoeia, and to face Fu Manchu's beautiful but evil daughter without acting like a moon-struck ninny.

Oh, and by the way, there's nothing personal about it. Just the way things have to be, old chap, so it comes as no real surprise when the Evil Doctor sends a very nice wedding present in the end.

(No, little one, I have no idea why people liked this stuff. Me? I read these out of a horrified fascination, like watching a train wreck in progress. For all our failings today, we really have come hundreds of years forward from the time this was written, back in the 1930s.)

//wiredweird

The story starts after Van Berg, Greville, The Chief and their party have excavated the artifacts of long-gone and heretical Islamic sect. Once they located the wonderful works in gold and jewels - the only things that an archaeologist would care about, y'know - they pack them up to take back their civilized country. The silly wogs around there wouldn't really appreciate them the way a British orientalist would, so it's only proper. Oh, and they dynamite the reliquary on their way out. Once the gold's gone, the shrine is of no further interest, right? At least, not to anyone who matters. All in a day's work.

(Yes, little one, people used to write books like this. Not just books, but whole series of books. And people used to read them - and not squirm while they read.)

But that shadowy sect isn't as gone as Greville and the others might have hoped. That explosion at the tomb is taken to be the heresiarch's second coming, and all of the near East is rumbling with unrest. In mysterious and dangerous ferment, an even more mysterious and dangerous force appears: the invidious Dr. Fu Manchu. Implacably evil, but strictly moral according to his own dark code, he siezes upon this chance to bring the East back into world prominence. "The East," for current purposes, is a uniform blob including China, the parts of Turkey that don't wear neckties, the Muslim world, and just about anything else outside of Europe. Except Africa, of course, which doesn't really count for much no matter how you look at it.

(Yes, little one, people back then were just as deliberately ignorant of world geography and culture as now. Maybe, if such a thing were possible, even more so).

Only fast-thinking Nayland Smith can hope to outwit this mysterious Chinese genius, to defeat his world-spanning league of henchmen, to evade the mysterious mind-altering drugs from the Dr.'s mystical pharmacopoeia, and to face Fu Manchu's beautiful but evil daughter without acting like a moon-struck ninny.

Oh, and by the way, there's nothing personal about it. Just the way things have to be, old chap, so it comes as no real surprise when the Evil Doctor sends a very nice wedding present in the end.

(No, little one, I have no idea why people liked this stuff. Me? I read these out of a horrified fascination, like watching a train wreck in progress. For all our failings today, we really have come hundreds of years forward from the time this was written, back in the 1930s.)

//wiredweird