Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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17 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Verne's most thrilling novel, 30 Nov 2002
This book proves Verne's greatness as a writer of fiction. The science in this science fiction flies largely in the face of modern science, yet the read is no less gripping today than it was in its infancy. The story is pretty simple. Professor Lidenbrock, a neurotically impatient scientist, discovers a cryptic manuscript written by a long-dead explorer; with the help of his nephew, he decodes the cryptogram to read an account of a journey to the center of the earth begun beneath a dormant volcano in Iceland. The nephew, Axel, a talented geologist and mineralogist himself, refuses to believe that the core of the earth is not exceedingly hot; additionally, he cares more about Grauben, the eccentric professor's ward, than risking his life on a scientific adventure. He proves unable to dissuade his uncle and thus joins with him on a journey to Iceland. There, they hire a stoic Icelander to lead them down into the earth. Most of the action takes place underground, with the adventurers suffering several trials, daring risks, and finally discovering a whole new world hidden miles below the earth's crust. The ultimate trial and danger they face consists of returning to the surface.Axel narrates the story, and the strength of the novel lies in his character. The professor and the Icelandic guide are unusual personalities, but Axel is very real and easy to relate to. He really does not want to go in the first place, and he is most liable to greet dangers and risks by bemoaning his fate and declaring his party done for in their foolish efforts. It is he who suffers the most privation when the men's water runs out, and it is he who finds himself lost in the utter blackness of the caverns for three days. When things are going well, though, Axel becomes wildly excited about the mission and temporarily forgets about his fears. This all goes to make him a very sympathetic character. Without him, the story would be a rather dispassionate account of an impossible journey by bland, unbelievable characters. You do have to shift your mind into low gear a few times when the characters begin speaking about the different types of minerals and rocks they are encountering, but overall the plot is rather thrilling, and you cannot help but begin early on trying to ascertain a way in which the intrepid explorers can return to share their discoveries with a skeptical scientific community. Verne knows how to tell a story, and you don't have to know a single thing about science to enjoy this novel immensely.
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11 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
short but not sweet, 6 Jul 2008
Axel Lindenbrock's uncle, Professor Otto Lindenbrock, has found a piece of paper written in Old Icelandic. Axel shortly manages to make sense of it, and it leads him and his uncle to Iceland to an extinct volcano called Sneffells. There, they go down into its crater with the help of an escort named Hans Bjelke, in hope to get to the centre of the earth! They will face hunger, thirst, and tiredness, but odd Professor Lindenbrock will not give up until he is at the earth's core...or until he is dead!
This is not the whole story but only a shortened version that takes only about 40 minutes to read if you do not want to read the whole story or you want to tell a friend about the book.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Down to earth, yet not, 31 Dec 2004
There are some scenes that stay in my memory from this book. One of these is when the adventuring trio raft across an underground ocean and have to stay on a raft in the midst of a fight between giant nemesis sea 'dinosaurs'. Another is when the narrator thinks that he has lost his companions and his torch breaks so he is left in the dark miles underground thinking that he is forever lost. I truly felt the fear of being lost to its extreme when reading this. He does manage to find the professor and Hans, but the means are about as crazy as so much in this book, (which is a quaint thing about the book). I think Jules Vernes does the "dare to be bad" thing with the unlikely things that happen, but he might have taken this too far and actually ended up by being a little bit bad because of these totally impossible and unbelievable things that happen or things which the travellers survive for a happy ending, (such as being ejected up from miles underground through the vent of a volcano and surviving). This is probably the most enjoyable and visual adventure story that I have read, and actually, although the things that happen are hard to believe, this is slightly in dream territory, and Vernes clearly had an appreciation for geology and things. I did an A-level in geology, and every time that I was going to object to one of his suggestions he would then justify it. (One of these was that I objected that under the earth it would be far too hot to survive, but Verne justifies this by saying that the protagonists go underground in a tunnel made of granite and hence the temperature gradient doesn't effect them much. At least he know which parts to justify. This must be one of the earliest science fiction books, and is sort of geological science fiction. Also, one thing that I falsely objected to is that going to the centre of the Earth is a totally ridiculous idea for a science fiction story because it is so far-fetched, but in the story the adventurers only actually stay within the Earth's crust, which although deep, is only a tiny distance in geological terms. This made things a lot more realistic. Also the exciting atmosphere of Iceland prior to their 'breach' of Earth's crust stays in my memory. If you like the sound of it, read this book.
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