Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea

A really good sea adventure book. It especially drew me in with the scuba diving parts, to which I can now happily relate! This particular version has a chronology of historical events, giving readers some context for the scientific/technological aspects of the book. For example, to us a fully electric submarine is a fact, but this was written twenty years before the first modern submarine - putting it firmly in the realm of fantasy for its time.

What I didn't like about this book was the over-detailed descriptions of sea animals and plants. Whole pages were devoted to simply listing off the types of creatures seen by the narrator, and sometimes it was upwards of five pages before the writing returned to the plot. Another complaint is that the narrator conveniently lost consciousness during tricky plot twists, so that “unavoidable” disasters were actually avoided but with no description of exactly how.

Verdict? Still a good read.