I had never read much Kipling, and this was a free download and I needed something to read on my phone while giving exams.
I had a hard time following the beginning, with who was talking, etc. However, the story held me and I was glad I stayed with it. This is the classic tale of ne'er-do-wells with grand schemes who bite off more than they can chew and end up eating crow (to mix metaphors).

With Sean Connery's death, I wanted to go back to the movie based upon the title story here, and finally read the story as well. Director Huston fills out the story, which is only about 44 pages long, quite well for a 2:10 movie, and keeps it in a very Kiplingesque mode thr0ughout the film.
Kipling's bibliographic history is quite a maze, but the selection of 17 stories here are from his 6 pamphlets from the Indian Railway publications, most of them printed earlier in the newspapers he worked for in India. I am not quite sure if that was 28 or 36 stories published in those 6 inexpensive volumes (flimsy, in a moist climate, and read to pieces, I wonder what one of them would cost today on the rare book market!). And the 3 stories he added on to the first British publication, which was in 3 volumes.
As editor Louis Cornell points out, there is a great deal of difference between those earlier, quick-write for newspaper publications, and the later 3 tales.
OTOH, this is one of the weaker Oxford World Classics Intros - it is outdated (late '80's), as is the bibliography of further reading. He assumes the reader already has a knowledge of the stories included in the volume, and goes on about characters being confined and hemmed in and enclosed. Little about British Imperialism.
His Notes are inconsistent. He does let us know that he depended upon the 1980's 4 volume Readers Guide from the Kipling Society, without using all of their notes. Amazingly, this RG was not comprehensive, and is now being updated as the New Readers Guide! A couple volumes of his work are available with the new notes on Kindle. In the case of "Soldiers Three", one third of the volume is Notes!
Many of the stories included here are set in the British Summering place of Simla, and many are stories of the flirtations and affairs that occur there annually. Although there are stories of war, and the military ranks, and from the POV of Indian natives here as well.
I had not read Kipling in decades, and plan to read more - mostly his earlier work. Right now I have little interest in his "Jungle Book" stories or his poetry.

Ah, Kipling! Well-educated, talented writer. Chauvinistic, colonial, a man of his times. Thankfully those times are past.

It's like being 12 and reading my childhood all over again. It is like a poet writing short stories.

Genuinely don’t know why I continue to read anything by Rudyard Kipling, especially as I always promise myself that I won’t read anything else by him whenever I finish anything he’s written.

Not only does this short story continue the theme of colonial writing and racist stereotypes of Indian and Afghani people, but it was also boring?

But yeah, I’m absolutely done with Kipling now. Thank god.

The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories es una colección de relatos cortos escrita por Rudyard Kipling, autor británico nacido en la India en el siglo XIX. Publicada por primera vez en 1888, la obra incluye algunas de las historias más conocidas de Kipling y destaca su habilidad para explorar temas como el imperialismo, la cultura colonial y la naturaleza humana.

El relato principal, The Man Who Would Be King, es una novela corta que sigue las aventuras de dos aventureros británicos, Daniel Dravot y Peachey Carnehan, mientras buscan fortuna en las tierras inexploradas de Afganistán. La historia aborda cuestiones de poder, ambición y las consecuencias de la arrogancia humana.

Además de esta historia, la colección presenta otros relatos que capturan la esencia de la vida en la India británica y otras colonias. Kipling, a menudo considerado un maestro en la narración de cuentos cortos, utiliza un estilo vibrante y evocador para transportar a los lectores a entornos exóticos y ofrecer perspectivas multifacéticas sobre las interacciones entre los colonizadores y las culturas indígenas.

Las historias de Kipling suelen revelar una mezcla de admiración y crítica hacia el imperialismo británico, explorando las complejidades de la coexistencia entre colonizadores y colonizados. Su estilo de escritura está imbuido de la riqueza de la cultura india, y sus relatos están llenos de detalles que reflejan la vida en el subcontinente durante ese período.