The first time is eerie, the N'th time banal

Haggard can be a fun read. He's the father of the mysterious lost land genre of adventure story, and although he's very far from PC he always tried to make sure that the natives were human--some vile and some more noble than the hero.

King Solomon's Mines introduced Alan Quatermain, who proved popular enough that Haggard wrote over a dozen more books about him. Haggard killed him off in one book, but wound up writing more anyway. And She had several sequels as well. Magic and reincarnation and Isis pop up all the time. (And I'm afraid a sampling of sequels suggests that they suffer from the usual deterioration.)

In The Ivory Child he sets the character for one lady by having her make mysterious pronouncements about her and the hero's lives having been connected before they were born, with a "mystic look come into her face."

That may have worked well enough a hundred years ago to outline a fey woman of mystery, but today it conjures images of a bored woman whose life hasn't been exotic enough and who has read a book of pop mysticism. Jarring. I'm not sure I'll finish it.