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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Classic Verne in the Arctic Circle,
By A Customer
This review is from: Fur Country (Paperback)
I bought this book last fall, and after a month or two it finally arrived from England. It was worth the wait. Excellent. The story is captivating and the characters are memorable. The environmental issues cannot go unnoticed, nor can the allusions to Noah's Ark. Verne takes some shots at the fur industry of North America during the mid-1800s. He criticizes their endless and mindless killing of animals just for the purpose of making a buck. The story also demonstrates the will of man and the power of faith in God when facing seemingly insurmountable odds.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Terrific adventure in the icy north,
By
This review is from: The Fur Country (Hardcover)
Of all the far-flung places in and outside of this world none fascinated and inspired Jules Verne more than our arctic regions. In The Adventures of Captain Hatteras (see my review), The Purchase of the North Pole, and in The Glacial Sphinx, a sequel to Edgar Allan Poe's wonderfully sustained novel The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket, Verne showed a keen familiarity and fascination with arctic science and exploration that thrill readers to this day. Even in his masterpiece Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea he traps the Nautilus under an icecap during a breathtaking, no pun intended, episode. In The Fur Country Verne once again takes us to the frigid outskirts of the Canadian Arctic, as he did earlier in Captain Hatteras. And its subtitle, 70 Degrees North Latitude, is a mere hint of the bone chilling tale about to unfold. The title refers to the development of the pelt industry by the Hudson's Bay Fur Company, which set up posts throughout the Northwest Territories to trap polar bears, foxes, beavers, martens, ermines, muskrats, polecats, seals and walruses, and hares. But as most Verne enthusiasts will rightly deduce, it is not that simple; something ominous and spectacular is in the offing.
A group of pioneers and soldiers is led by Lt. Jasper Hobson to establish a trading post in Cape Bathurst overlooking the Arctic Ocean. Among the members of the expedition are two guests: a courageous and strong willed woman, a rarity in Verne fiction, named Paulina Barnett, and an astronomer named Thomas Black who comes along to observe a solar eclipse. However, the fort they construct is not on solid ground but part of an enormous iceberg that an earthquake dislodges from the mainland and sends it drifting westward. Will the 140 square mile island of ice and soil continue floating towards the Bering Strait and south to the warmer waters of the Pacific, break apart, dissolve and plunge the castaways into the deep? Or will they escape the disaster by constructing a ship that can sail them to the safety of terra firma? The idea of an ocean voyage via a massive vessel was something Verne had earlier explored in The Floating City, and later on in his fascinating satire The Floating Island. Both are noteworthy tomes, but The Fur Country stands apart as a highly suspenseful adventure with a rousing climax impossible to forget. Merci Monsieur Verne. -Victor Rodriguez Author of Eldorado in East Harlem, and Ravenhall
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