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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
"The jungle reclaims its own.", April 14, 2009
This review is from: The Lost World (Mass Market Paperback)
(4.5 stars) Fans of the Sherlock Holmes series may be as surprised as I was by the complete change of style that this novel represents for its author. Gone are the formulas, the formal language, the stilted dialogue, and the gamesmanship between author and reader that characterize the Holmes novels, however delightful and successful those may be as mysteries. Instead, we see Doyle letting his imagination run free in a sci-fi romp that is both fun and funny, and often thoughtful. Written in 1912, during an eight-year hiatus from his Sherlock Holmes novels, and six years after his last "historical novel," The Lost World is the first of five works involving temperamental Professor Edward Challenger, a scientist investigating evolution and related subjects.
Challenger is a scientific outcast, vilified for his most recent paper, in which he claimed to have seen dinosaurs and pre-historic creatures in a remote area of South America, but which he refuses to locate on a map. Blaming the press for much of the controversy over his research, he despises reporters, and regularly assaults them. Young Ed Malone, a reporter looking for more excitement than he is getting on his regular beat, manages to make a connection with Challenger, after passing a test of his mettle.
Along with two other scientists, Elizabeth Summerlee and Lord John Roxton, they travel with Challenger to the mysterious plateau in Brazil where he claims to have seen extraordinary beasts believed dead for millions of years. Malone's newspaper, which partially funded the expedition, expects him to send daily reports of his adventures by messenger back to "civilization. These form much of the novel's narrative.
The place where Challenger has made his discoveries, which the other scientists are soon able to verify, is at the base of a high plateau in the jungle which has protected it from intrusion by man. This self-contained universe has protected creatures that have become extinct elsewhere. The scientists' often death-defying thrills--with canoes going over falls, shooting by headhunters, vengeance taken by one of the guides for past crimes, a war to the death between two separate, but related, species on the evolutionary tree, attacks by pre-historic creatures, and even a love story--make this novel non-stop fun to read. Far more "relaxed" in style and more imaginative in content than the novels for which Doyle is now (justifiably) famous, The Lost World, written almost a hundred years ago, builds on our universal spirit of adventure and our never-ending fascination with dinosaurs and their behavior. n Mary Whipple
The Poison Belt: Being an Account of Another Amazing Adventure of Professor Challenger (Bison Frontiers of Imagination), #2 in the series
THE LAND OF MIST, #3 in the series
When the World Screamed, With the Lost World, #4
The Disintegration Machine and Other Stories, #5
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Outstanding, November 9, 2009
This review is from: The Lost World (Mass Market Paperback)
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's (Sherlock Holmes) best work. An original that isn't worth reading JUST because it's a classic. It is simply a magnificent book.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Pretty Good Story!, August 15, 2009
This review is from: The Lost World (Mass Market Paperback)
Join two self-absorbed and bickering scientists, Challenger and Summerlee, cautious Lord John the Lion Tamer (see Muldoon, Jurassic Park I) and some kid (made out more or less to be you) as they somewhat arrogantly force their way into a veritable living museum of flora and fauna........shooting, maiming, and dominating everything along the way, in their quest to satisfy their own wanderlust and attain world recognition.
A true turn-of-the-century attitude book, complete with Zambo, a black companion more or less made out to be a loyal dog, Mexican guides who are shot dead at point blank range (justifiably, of course) for their treachery............ and a community of ape-looking people who are mercilessly slaughtered so "civilization can prevail".
Dinosaurs vary from near brainless death-machines whos only seeming purpose in life is to be gunned down on sight until their legs stop moving, to curious-looking but farmable cows kept for their meat and resources.
The book ends with the authors slight nagging regret that all the wonders they discovered are soon to be raped and pillaged by money-making opportunists once the secret gets out, and the forgotten place becomes "unLost" and nationally recognized. Duhh.
The book is not entirely without satire however, and the author takes time to point out (and quite humorously) the irony of self-aggrandizing Challenger and skeptical Summerlee in all their pompousness being forced to reckon with humbling surroundings far unlike any lecture hall. (One memorable scene in particular where the noble Challenger is found to closely resemble the neandrethal Ape-King in features and temperment, much to his staunch denials).
Really a well done story, and certainly considering the time it was written an original and imaginative work. Worth reading!
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