Rating: 
Summary: A Great Classic
Review: So why am I writing a review of a book published in the early 1900s?
I hope some young people will read all the positive reviews and pick up the book and have a great time. No Stephen King or Dean Koontz wrote this. A wonderfully narrated book of a time that is not coming back. The language is smooth as flowing honey and the Indian words are used with the skill of one born and brought up there (Kipling was later sent to England to complete his schooling).
Enjoyable even after years and years.
I would recommend to buy the hardcover (Everyman Library) edition. A bargain at Amazon's prices
Rating:
Summary: A tug of war between Kipling's two minds
Review: Some say Kipling was an imperialist. Some say he was an Indophile. I think he was both at the same time. One Kipling was a polished and sophisticated part of the ruling class, the British. Another Kipling was a child, innocent of the artificial divisions of the society, fascinated by the color and splendour of the Jewel in the Crown, India. This novel at a subtle level, to me, represents a tug of war between the the two warring Kiplings. While the British elite Kipling is forced to believe in the good the Raj is doing to the poor rascals, the other Kipling has his doubts and frustrated by his inability to declare them freely, they find a veiled expression in Kim.
Kim is a Classic story of a boy's adventure in British India. There runs a background plot about "the great game", the spying war between the British and the Russian empires. Kim becomes a chain-man (spy) for the British and his native early years make him formidable in the profession. However more interesting is the other parallel story, that of friendship between Kim and a Tibetan lama and their wanderings together which also make this a road novel.
Kipling understands the oriental way of life and its philosophy. "Only chicken and Sahibs walk around without reason" he says. Through many such comments Kipling questions the western way of work, hurry and constant activity. As the lama says "to refrain from any action is best".
Lastly, one can not but wonder, how much Kim represents a fantacy of Kipling that he wanted to happen to himself. A few common facts between the story and Kipling's own life, for example his father's association with the Lahore Musuem, his own schooling experience etc are revealing. They almost make you hear Kipling sighing "I wish thus would have happened with me!"
Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A classic boy's adventure
Review: The tale is a classic adventure story, of Kim, Irish orphan growing up as a street urchin in northern India. It is a colourful picture of a short period in history when East and West met and were intertwined during the British Raj in India. Unromantic lefty dullards will go on about the imperialist tone of the book. But the book tells of an India so gloriously rich and diverse that the British are simply absorbed like conquerors before, one caste among hundreds: Moghuls, Brahmins and Sikhs, Pathans and Tibetans. We are left in no illusions about the political realities of imperial India. We know that the white man is in charge, though they are shown to consist of fools like the Anglican chaplain as well as good men like Colonel Creighton. Like heroes such as Aragorn in the Lord of the Rings or Shasta in C S Lewis' A Horse and His Boy, Kim is always aware deep down (and it strengthens him even though at times he hates it) that he is set apart, of a nobler race, because he is a Sahib. Yet this seems perfectly natural in India, a land of myriad castes and classes, from high-born Brahmins to low, despised, Untouchables. The characters are brilliant and amusing: Kim is such a lovable scamp ("You - you Od! Thy mother was married under a basket!") I find it hard to understand how anyone can fail to be immediately absorbed in his world and his fortunes. Hurree Babu and Mahbub Ali are likeable Indian characters. The Tibetan holy man, whom Kim follows as a disciple, portrayed in such a tender light that for all his scattiness one believes in his holiness, and we understand why Kim follows and loves him like a father. But this is a boy's book, and the female characters are marginal and unsympathetically treated. Most will find the Indian slang and jargon tough going, unless they are willing to skim it over, and it is often necessary to keep a finger on the glossary at the end of the book. Nonetheless, beautifully written, and a Good Read.
Rating: 
Summary: Still worth reading
Review: This is a very entertaining novel, though not as good as the best of Kipling's short stories. As an adventure-oriented bildungsroman, Kim is well constructed with its gradual exposure of the ethnic and religous diversity of India, its engaging characters, and good quality of writing. While written as an adventure novel, Kim is also Kipling's prediction of the British Raj would become. The hero, Kim O'Hara, is in many ways an idealization of what saw as the logical conclusion of British India; a hybrid composed of both Indian and British elements. In an ironic way, this is how things turned out in British India. But where Kim is ethnically British with a largely Indian cultural background, the real inheritors of the British Raj were ethnic Indians (of a variety of ethnicities, castes, and faiths) whose outlook is colored strongly by Western influences. How this book is read in a 'post-colonial' era is an interesting question. It would be easy, and wrong, to dismiss this book merely as an Imperialist tract, though Kipling clearly supported British Imperial control. It is even wronger to attack Kipling's racism, though there are unquestionably stereotyped elements present. In many ways, Kim is a celebration of India's ethnic and religous diversity. Probably the most unsympathetic characters in the book are not Indian, but Britishers with provincial outlooks. Kipling's support of the Empire is rather more subtle. It is clear that he viewed the existence of the huge and relatively tolerant polyglot society that was the Raj as the result of relatively benign British rule and protection. This is probably true. Without British overlordship, India is likely to have been a congeries of competing states riven by ethnic and religous divisions. Where Kipling is profoundly misleading is what he leaves out, particularly the economic exploitation India and crucial role India played in the Imperial economy.
Rating:
Summary: Among the top 3 most influencial novels of 20thc
Review: This was probably the first - and almost only time a white author really entered the mind of asia.
It opened the whole relationship of the west with india an even ironically helped the campaign of Ghandi and his (MKG's) largely phoney portrayal of a hindu holy-man (so frightening to muslims).
Kiplin himself perhaps saw Kim as his "perfect self" though sadly the real Kipling about this time embrased the two dimensional imperialism of the Daily Mail - in want of a distant Bad Guy for his actual manichean fantasy he fitted up the germans - and sadly had a huge influence on the disaster that was the First World War.
"Kim" Philby (named for the hero) and others in search of this foreign world of duplicity and black and white values later embraced communism.
This novel affected all of this - was the first realistic (rather than idealised) view of buddhism in its evolved and contradictorary form (I like the way the Lama blends in snatches of Pure Land along with his "no self" agnosticism). Kipling "sold" a positive picture of India and its two-way relationship with "Blighty" that greatly influenced later events an perceptions of both right and left.
Too bad he embraced the rich and powerful so whole-heartedly - (as did WB Yeats at a similar time in a similar way) and so lost his clear poetic vision.
Rather than take on the task of fighting germany - he might have wrtiten a sequel - in which O'Hara had to contemplate the foundations for the glamourisation of the struggle between the European powers - questioned the disruptive influence of the Entente Cordial (all the dangers of a treaty and none of the mutual benefits) and why exactly Britain had to be a continental power with a land-army (responsible for the defense of France and Belgium but with no say in the methods) when it had plenty to do across the oceans.
Kipling painted a picture of the glamour and cultural richness of India - and of great-power conflict. He knew a lot more about the first than the last - sadly because of his authentic voice on Asia folk took heed of him over Europe.
He is one a few people who almost completely discounted a great cultural good with a massive social evil. The pen was mightier than the sword and it was correctly said that at that time the word of Kipling was more eagerly listened to than the words of all but a few heads of state. He lost his own son to the multinational meatgrinder that he and a few "war-glamourisers" wound into action - implying that the whole thing might be more fun than driving a desk in Finchley - he encouraged the French to think they could use the British to gain hegemony in Europe - based on the sound prediction that the Rosbifs would leave when the bloodletting was over.
I adore this man and abhor him - I want to grab hold of him after this book (1901) and send him back to India. You don't understand the Twentieth century if you don't read this book - from the Somme to TE Lawrence to Woodstock to the rise of Mandela is the story of folk who read this book and/or felt its influence. Only the Beatles can compete - but only because they too were influenced. Kipling as colonial taught generations to identify with the locals - thusd fueling de-colonialisation - into the hands of the very "Babu-Class" that he distrusted. They were not like his "Babu". Hurree - they were "in a hurry"!
If only the Neo-cons had both read it and understood its mixed influence and implications. The whole Iraq fiasco could be described as "insufficient Kim".
Rating: 
Summary: An imperialist's bildungsroman
Review: To be honest, I disdained Kipling as a writer ever since turning away from the Jungle Book movie. When pressed to read his more representative novel "Kim", however, I was much more impressed. Kipling picks up on the bildungsroman theme in his book about a young white boy growing up in British India. True, the reader feels the heavy intrusion of Kipling in the narrative, such as the caricatured descriptions of ethnic peoples, but one also feels a genuine fondness for India, however patronizingly misplaced. I thought some passages were quite remarkable for a writer at the height of the British Raj, such as the occasional sympathetic treatment of Indians and the allowance of deep relationships between the conquerors and the conquered (e.g., Kim and Mahbub Ali). The feeling of youth is well-given and Kipling succeeds at making the horror of imperialism both remote and romantic.
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