20,000 Leagues Under the Sea (spoiler alert!)
Jules Verne must've been so hungry when he wrote this. About 80% of the book is lists of sea creatures and whether or not they're delicious. Verne was obviously a huge Moby Dick fan and even mentions it a couple times in this book, also emulating Melville's lengthy informational excursions, but I didn't find this to be carried by the writing in the same way as Moby Dick (which is also not a pageturner; let's be real). I also saw elements of Poe's sci-fi/adventure works but with less suspense.
Overall, the characters other than Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax are very flat. Conseil is devoted to Arronax and likes classifying fish and has no other thoughts, feelings, interests or traits. Usually he only serves as an occasion for Arronax to provide information on some topic (quasi "Conseil was sad so I told him the history of the underwater telegraph cable"). Ned Land is angry and talks about eating land animals all the time (confusing because he's a whaler) and has no other personality. The main intrigue of Captain Nemo is wondering who he is, how he came to build the Nautilus, why and his crew speak a mysterious language and why he hates people so much, but none of these things is ever cleared up, which is a pretty big cop-out. The crew don't really have personalities.
Obviously, Verne's main focus was on world-building, and that's pretty well done. The Nautilus is thought-out down to minor details, as are the undersea exploration episodes, but these make up a much smaller part of the contents than you'd think (again, it's a lot of lists of fish). Since I associate Verne with adventures, I was surprised to find this a pretty slow read. Not in a bad way – there's something relaxing about it – but it's definitely not thrilling.
Overall, the characters other than Captain Nemo and Professor Aronnax are very flat. Conseil is devoted to Arronax and likes classifying fish and has no other thoughts, feelings, interests or traits. Usually he only serves as an occasion for Arronax to provide information on some topic (quasi "Conseil was sad so I told him the history of the underwater telegraph cable"). Ned Land is angry and talks about eating land animals all the time (confusing because he's a whaler) and has no other personality. The main intrigue of Captain Nemo is wondering who he is, how he came to build the Nautilus, why and his crew speak a mysterious language and why he hates people so much, but none of these things is ever cleared up, which is a pretty big cop-out. The crew don't really have personalities.
Obviously, Verne's main focus was on world-building, and that's pretty well done. The Nautilus is thought-out down to minor details, as are the undersea exploration episodes, but these make up a much smaller part of the contents than you'd think (again, it's a lot of lists of fish). Since I associate Verne with adventures, I was surprised to find this a pretty slow read. Not in a bad way – there's something relaxing about it – but it's definitely not thrilling.
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