As is often the case with H. Rider Haggard, this volume in the further adventures of Allan Quatermain contains both riveting action, a bit of philosophy, and several touches of melancholy. After a lapse of almost a quarter of century, Haggard picked up his story of Allan following the 1889 publication of Allan's Wife. Already something of a transitional figure during the late Victorian period, Haggard by the time of Marie's publication in 1912 had passed through the Edwardian era and into the reign of George V, right before World War I. How appropriate, as the Zulu king, Dingaan, constantly refers to the Englishmen in Marie as the Sons of George, albeit Dingaan means the late George IV of Great Britain, who had died in 1830, some eight years before the main events in Marie take place.

Marie is a brisk read. In it, the certainties of the earlier Quatermain have given place to a sense of impending doom. And this even though it is a tale of the young Allan, not the mature man of the early novels. Neither Quatermain or Haggard seem as sure of the future as they once were--even when that future is death. For death, here, is a much more spoiled affair, the assurances of a resolution in the after life become a bit doubtful. ( )

This is set in Allan's earlier life and tells his romance with Marie as well as the fatal encounter of the Boers under Retief with the Zulu king Dingaan (the brother and successor of Shaka). ( )