At the end of the 19th century, Englishman Archibald Hunter moves to Scotland and comes into possession of some documents dating back to the Spanish Armada. He then goes on a treasure hunt with young Marjory Drake, an American heiress, whom he just met.
One of the main problems with the book is that it really doesn’t know what it wants to be. In the beginning, Archie has a vision and meets a seer who explains to him that he has the second sight. Shortly after that, he sees a procession of ghosts emerging from the sea. And then this supernatural element is virtually abandoned, because it’s only other (non-essential) appearance occurs almost at the end of the book. It made me wonder what the purpose of it even was, because it easily could have been left out entirely. I also didn’t think that it fit with the tone of the rest of the book, which among other things spends a lot of time on a kidnapping plot involving Marjory that seemed unnecessarily convoluted. There is some political intrigue here with the US government trying to protect her, because she is a very wealthy American citizen that made a great contribution to the war effort of the US in the Spanish-American War. On top of that there is also the romance between Archie and her that grinds the story to a halt all too often and is a little too saccharine for my tastes.
The best part for me was the hunt for the treasure, which required them to decipher some encoded letters, to find and explore a sea cave, and to protect their findings from a Spaniard who suddenly emerges and tries to lay claim to it. This also has some nice historical background with the treasure being the Pope’s and having been lost during the invasion of the Spanish Armada. In my opinion the focus should have been either on the kidnapping plot or the treasure hunting plot with some romance sprinkled in. The way this book is written, none of the story lines really work because they are all vying for attention simultaneously, while still being inexplicably boring for long stretches.
I also had a big problem with the way the character of Marjory is written. Stoker apparently wanted to make her an independent, very “American” or modern woman, but he either didn’t know how to go about it or he didn’t care to conceal his real thoughts on women. It is not enough to introduce a woman as a proud patriot who knows how to use guns and is at first strong-willed, only to make her fall for the hero almost immediately upon meeting, then quickly marry him, and in the end having to be saved by him from a nefarious plot like the damsel in distress she really is. There is also a scene where her elderly companion educates her on the duty of a wife, which of course is to serve her husband, and she is immediately chagrined and doesn’t dare to disagree. It all screams of patting yourself on the back for creating a “modern woman”, and then turning around and saying, “she can be as modern as she wants, but in the end, she is only a woman after all and needs a man.” I would have preferred it if he had made her more “traditional” because this pseudo-progressive and patronizing drivel infuriates me much more than any antiquated view of women. He builds her up as this exceptional character who I was initially impressed by just to tear her down and put her in her place by showing her the errors of her modern ways.
And now I’ve written myself into a rage and had to reduce the stars from two to one, because I just realized I hate the book. Don’t read.