Talbot Mundy (1879–1940)

A very creditable book, Talbot Mundy's Om: The Secret of Ahbor Valley is nevertheless hard to quantify. An inspiration for James Hilton's Lost Horizon, which was released nearly a decade later and is one of my favourite novels, Om follows the improbably-named protagonist Cottswold Ommony in British India in the 1920s, as he sets out to discover a mystical hidden valley and learn its secrets, not least that of the 'Jade of Ahbor' gemstone, of which he has encountered a stolen fragment. Throughout this story, Mundy laces his narrative heavily with spiritual and philosophical digressions, all of which are robust and a rung deeper than your usual East-meets-West mysticism.

Om exists in two worlds, and this shifting foundation is perhaps why I found it difficult to love, for all its qualities. It recalls Kim, a novel I did not like, but while it has one hand in the past in echoing Kipling's story, it also reaches out to the future, not only in suggesting the path which Hilton would later follow in Lost Horizon, but acknowledging the challenges of the coming years. "The men of the West are studying the construction of the atom, and have guessed at the force imprisoned in it," Mundy writes here, in 1924, more than two decades before Hiroshima. "Wait until they have learned how to explode the atom, and then see what they will do to one another" (pg. 363). Adventure stories rarely have this depth of wisdom, this metaphysical underpinning, and Mundy's is a genuine depth. Each chapter begins, Dune-like, with excerpts from a fictional Lama's book of teachings, and Mundy's professed following of Theosophy finds great airing through the characters' dialogue throughout. Many won't like philosophy mixed in with their fiction-reading, but for thoughtful and intelligent readers there is much to ponder here and the ideas are a fine complement to the story.

However, while the philosophical side is sound, the adventure story itself is found wanting. Mundy's characterisation of Ommony lacks the inner spiritual wanderlust which made Hilton's later protagonist Conway so relatable (even though 'Ommony' is surely meant to hint at 'Om', the meditative word). The underlying mystery of how Ommony's sister went missing in the Ahbor valley some years earlier is poorly-seeded and almost an after-thought. Characters leave the story when they are no longer convenient, rather than when their arcs are completed. After a promising start, with action, intrigue and exotic mystery, the story starts to drag: rather than heading out on a ripping adventure, Ommony becomes part of a kind of travelling circus which puts on a transcendental play in the villages it passes. The reader's interest fizzles out and when we finally arrive at our mystical valley of Ahbor, we've been off the tracks for so long we've forgotten why we were headed there.

The scene in which Ommony and his companions trek through to the hidden city, and the lost valley opens up before us, is a fine one, but in truth the exciting ingredients of a lost city and a powerful treasure are undersold. We are told that the natives of Ahbor "guard the valley as cobras guard ancient ruins" (pg. 367), but they are never really encountered in the story. Much of the threat, peril and excitement is informed second-hand through the characters' dialogue with one another, rather than being exampled in the narrative. A character explains the magical value of the Ahbors' jade gemstone, but we never see its effects in the story. The intelligence and depth underneath is often wise ("men fight to the death over the Golden Rule [of the Sermon on the Mount]," one character says on page 365, "What would they not do with the Jade of Ahbor?") but the story overlaying it is thin and stretched. It's to Mundy's great credit that he didn't rely on cheap thrills but instead utilised (and, in some ways, subverted) the adventure-story format to deliver a deeper, more satisfying message: there are adventurers and treasure-hunters of "the sort who hunt miracles and seek to make themselves superior by short-cuts. Whereas there are no short-cuts, and there is no superiority of the sort they crave, but only a gradual increase of responsibility, which is attained by earned self-mastery" (pg. 389). I am happy to follow a good author like Mundy, eschewing short-cuts; I only wish there had been a little more payoff on the adventure itself.… (meer)

This book is a fast-moving adventure tale based on the fascination that the Orient has long held for certain Westerners. Much as in science fiction, the Indian subcontinent serves as another world, where the everyday customs and assumptions of the Anglo-Saxon world don’t necessarily apply.
The Nine Unknown of the title is a mysterious group hidden from public sight. Each is entrusted with preserving an aspect of powerful ancient wisdom. They are known to each other, but each recruits a set of nine followers who know only their leader, not the other members of the Nine. On the same principle, each of these followers replicates a group of nine, forming a pyramid throughout the Indian subcontinent to protect the mysteries.
In keeping with that premise, this tale isn’t told from the perspective of the Nine, but that of a disparate group of adventurers on their trail. This group has been sent to Father Cyprian, an eighty-year-old Catholic priest for whom all such mysteries smack of the occult and thus should be destroyed. Accordingly, he has devoted his life to collecting the secret books containing the arcane knowledge of the Nine. Whoever possessed the complete set would have all power, but Cyprian—like a latter-day Savonarola—intends to incinerate them.
Mundy supplies few details of the ancient wisdom, apart from anticipating splitting the atom (not bad for a book published in 1923).
The freebooters were recruited by an investor in New York. He is named in chapter one but plays no further role in the book, leaving me to wonder why the author bothered to give him a name, even if it is the delightful moniker Meldrum Strange. The men he recruits have little interest in books. Instead, they have signed on for the gold that the Nine are alleged to have hoarded. Four are Westerners, Three are local, and in keeping with the author’s Orientalist fascination, they are more colorfully depicted than the Westerners. One is a Pathan, a fierce warrior from the Afghan hills (accompanied by seven sons from seven different women). Another is a fastidious and murderous Sikh. The third is an overweight, comically loquacious Hindu. He is named in chapter one as the source from whom the anonymous narrator heard the tale. The significance of that detail and the remark that his accuracy is frequently questionable set up a great payoff in the final chapter (nope, not gonna say more).
The search for the Nine Unknown is complicated by the existence of a parallel group structured in the same way. They, too, seek the knowledge of the Nine, but to use it for their own dark purposes in the service of the destructive goddess Kali.
The way the adventurers come into contact with the Nine is a delightful plot twist. In my limited understanding, a principle of Asian martial arts is to use the energy of your adversary to accomplish your own aims. Here, too, I will say no more.
Mundy includes some philosophy and local color, but these elements are subordinated to the action. I wish I’d read more books like this when I was young. But it’s not bad that I can discover them now that I’m old and have more time to read for pleasure.… (meer)