I couldn't agree more with the earlier reviewer. Mundy is one of my favorite 'adventure' novelists, and this is one of his better works. He's almost forgotten today, but as a pulp writer he kept many on the edge of their seats 60 years ago. If you like E.R. Burroughs, Sax Rohmer or Robert E. Howard, this is one you shouldn't miss (Howard based one of his characters, 'Francis X Gordon on Mundy's King) If you liked R. Kiplings 'Kim'...imagine Kim grown up. Exotic love interest, intrique,a keen eye for native customs of 100 years ago, swords and blazing pistols, charging lancers on a path 6 feet wide, with death inches away over the edge 3000 feet to the canyon below...'King, of the Khyber Rifles' is about a British officer involved in the 'mysticism' of then-forbidden Tibet, includes frequent skirmishes with skulking mountain warriors, the old 'keeping the Khyber pass open' ploy, oh just read it. Mix up a peg of whiskey-soda, and escape the mundane last years of the 20th century. You can't go wrong with Talbot Mundy.

Imagine Kipling writing about India... now imagine the same stories as rewrittten by Edgar Rice Burroughs, but an ERB that actually sounds as if he's been in the places he's writing about. And all the detail of a George Macdonald Fraser novel... Then you throw in some mystic stuff that makes William S. Burroughs sound illiterate, add a pinch of "Boys Own Stories" or "Biggles" or whatever then light a match... this is one amazing novel, it really is.