 "A grand romp back to the Age of Exploration" | 2009-03-06 |
| - Reviewed By resqgeek |
| What if dinosaurs had somehow survived, living in isolation in some remote, unexplored corner of the world? This classic adventure story starts with just that premise, and builds it into a lively tale of exploration and discovery. Mostly told in a first person narrative, the reader is taken into the very heart of the story as a team heads off to South America to verify a discovery that is impossible for a skeptical world to believe. Written almost a century ago, Doyle's novel takes us back to the age of Empire and Exploration, when anything seemed possible, and the there were still places on the Earth that had not yet been fully explored. This story grabs the reader and doesn't let go until the very last page. |
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| "Nice edition of 'Lost World'" | 2008-11-12 |
| - Reviewed By User: A2OTKDIQEN1M5I |
Good inexpensive edition of ACD's "Lost World."
Comes with a nice (though overly hyperbolic and post-modernist) 15-page introduction, and 10 pages of "explanatory notes." |
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 "An escape book!" | 2008-08-19 |
| - Reviewed By User: ACOBR6E6FLF3I |
| Another classic adventure which uses the written word instead of computer graphics to make you visualize this mysterious world of sudden death by million year old living beasts and proto-humans. Get your best Amazon River basin map out and see if you locate this wonderous plateau. If you have seen the movie, you only have half the story. Read the book. For fun, become familiar with the story of "Col. Fawcett" and his expedition in the Amazon. |
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| "Arthur Conan Doyle's favourite character" | 2007-12-30 |
| - Reviewed By User: ATSO7AOHFHUMB |
| Professor Challenger is his creator's favourite character, hot tempered, irascible but full of life and vitality. The book is easier to read than the Sherlock Holmes novels and the story is extremely interesting. Definitely worth reading. |
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| "Masterful adventure in a prehistoric paradise" | 2007-12-16 |
| - Reviewed By User: A10T0OW97SFBB |
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle shows us in The Lost World that he is capable of far more than short detective stories. In this book we are taken on a journey into the heart of the Amazon in South America, to an isolated place where the prehistoric has survived to the present. Four men together face the wonderous awe and danger inherent in such a place, which quickly shifts from paradise to hell and back again as new dangers and wonders present themselves.
The four men who undertake this expedition are: (1) Professor Challenger, an immensely conceited (and brilliant) scientist who has perhaps the worst temper I have ever read about coupled with a very dominating personality, (2) Professor Summerlee, a scientist with a very acidic personality who is rather less courageous than the rest of the party and whose chief role is largely to constantly argue with Professor Challenger, (3) Lord John Roxton, a rather level-headed explorer/big-game hunter who is somewhat a mentor to the main character/narrator who is, (4) Ed Malone, a young reporter who goes on the expedition to impress a girl he likes. He is rather rash and undisciplined at times, though he is far more level-headed than the rest of the party, excepting Lord Roxton.
Doyle achieves not only a truly exciting adventure story, but also a very humerous/insightful study on the relationship between four very different people with conflicting personalities. I always found it most amusing to read about the two professors bickering over what species the creatures which were immediately threatening their lives were, while the other two tried to find a solution to the danger.
Dinosaurs actually play a surprisingly small role in this book, which largely centers upon the journey to the plateau to verify Professor Challanger's claims that he discovered prehistoric life living upon it, and the subsequent danger which they face at the top. This danger largely takes the form of ape-men (compared to the "missing link") who have sub-humanoid intelligence and fully human cruelty. This book is also a rather blatant proponent of Darwinian naturalism, and Doyle's mentioning of the ease of faking a dinosaur bone is thought by many to be evidence that Doyle himself was (at least partly) responsible for the famous Piltdown Man hoax.
In short, this book is an excellent adventure story, though vastly different than the usual adventure, which could be described as "magical." This story defies the term "magical," as it is really very steeped in the scientific mindset which precludes the magical element in most adventure stories of the period. The difference between something like H. Rider Haggard's King Solomon's Mines and Doyle's The Lost World is staggering. The very essence of the former is magical and significantly shaped by a sense of something beyond nature lurking in the background, while the latter has a more nature-based sense of wonder. In Haggard if the main character senses something watching him the reader's mind assumes that it must be the old witch, who we assume must have supernatural power because of the atmosphere of the book. In Doyle, however, when Malone feels something watching him our minds automatically assume that it is some prehistoric creature. In this sense (the naturalistic wonder as opposed to the fantastic wonder of most adventure stories) Doyle is very similar to his contemporary H.G. Wells. To be quite honest, if I read this book without seeing the author's name, I would have immediately assumed that Wells wrote it, as this book has the same "feel" as one of his books. There is just something in the very nature of the works of the early staunch naturalist writers (and Doyle reflects this, even though he was a spiritist) that has never been replicated since, and it is very present in this book.
Overall grade: A |
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| "From the creator of Holmes, come this fascinating story" | 2005-04-07 |
| - Reviewed By dago15 |
In The Lost World, two scientists, an expert in chaos theory (the same fellow), and two children (one boy and one girl -- but not the same two) go to a small island off the coast of Costa Rica (a different island) to see the dinosaurs which an unscrupulous capitalist and his cronies created without adequate planning. The good guys ride around the island in a highly-modified four wheel drive with a trailer while being pursued by the dinosaurs and the bad guys. The good guys eventually get out of the mess while the bad guys get eaten. The story drags a little while the reader is made to endure interminable lectures by the chaos expert on the evils of messing with something humans don't quite understand -- which, in this case, is the entire ecosystem of the planet. The chaos expert almost gets eaten (this time the reader doesn't feel quite so bad about his near demise since the lectures come to an abrupt end). The reader is happy that all of the good guys get out. At the end we aren't quite sure what will become of the dinosaurs that are left on the island. We already know that the dinosaurs have figured out how to make lots of baby dinosaurs and we know that a lot of the dinosaurs have figured out how to get off the island.
If The Lost World seems a bit repetitive, it isn't all that bad. I have to admit that from the time I found out about the book (in the Sunday New York Times Book Review section) to the time I finished the book was under twenty-four hours -- so the book is a page-turner. Unfortunately, it is a page-turner which ultimately does not satisfy. I suppose that one will have to read the book to keep up with the story since there is definitely going to be another sequel. This is bad news for bean farmers in Central America, since the dinosaurs are picking them off in apparently increasing numbers. If the citizens of North America's southern border states were nervous about killer bees marching up Central America, I can't wait to find out what happens when the scourge turns out to be acid spitting dinosaurs instead.
My advice is to borrow this book from the library. |
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