The Queen of Atlantis (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) [Paperback]

Pierre Benoit (Author), Arthur Chambers (Translator), Hugo Frey (Afterword)

Book Description

Publication Date: May 1, 2005 | Series: Bison Frontiers of Imagination

In 1903 Lieutenant Olivier Ferrières of the French army welcomes Captain de Saint-Avit as the new commandant of his post in Algeria. Shunned by his fellow officers, the captain has been accused of the brutal murder of his friend Lieutenant Morhange, when the two were lost alone in the desert. To Ferrières’s horror, Saint-Avit soon confesses to the crime, unveiling a shocking tale of lost worlds, lust, murder, and the enslavement of desire in a forgotten desert kingdom—Atlantis!

 

Antinea, the queen of Atlantis, seeks to destroy and imprison the men in her net through her beauty and cruelty, enshrining their electroplated bodies in a fantastic hall, assigning each doomed lover a number and a plaque in his memory. Caught in this web, Saint-Avit and Morhange attempt to escape until love, passion, and jealousy threaten their friendship and their very lives. For only one man has ever captured the heart of Antinea, and no one escapes the queen of Atlantis.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“I believe this is the first new edition of a classic novel of Atlantis since the 1960s. . . . A beautiful but cruel queen menaces the men who stumble into her isolated world, where she lives surrounded by a mixture of barbarianism and superscience. This is not the same translation as the Ace edition.”—Science Fiction Chronicle

(Science Fiction Chronicle )

About the Author

Pierre Benoit (1886–1962) grew up in Algeria and Tunisia as the son of an officer stationed in North Africa. Queen of Atlantis is the second of his forty-two novels. Hugo Frey is a senior lecturer in contemporary history at University College, Chichester, England, and a specialist in contemporary French cultural history. He is the author of Louis Malle.

Product Details

• Paperback: 310 pages
• Publisher: Bison Books (May 1, 2005)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0803269161
• ISBN-13: 978-0803269163
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 6.6 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,483,437 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

6 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Why bother?, May 5, 2006

By 

cinephile "[e-mail]" (Oklahoma) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Queen of Atlantis (Bison Frontiers of Imagination) (Paperback)

Unless you're a particular fan of Pierre Benoit, you should probably skip this and read "She", by H. Rider Haggard, instead. If you've already read that, this book will just disappoint you.

It was a struggle to make myself finish "Queen of Atlantis." The stories within stories continually lead to a dead end. There is no satisfactory resolution, and the character motivations are never quite convincing. I suspect some nuances have been lost through translation and the passage of time.

According to the afterword, the book was an influential piece of French fiction. It was evidently a very successfully-marketed book by a fairly prominent author. However, even critics of the time recognized how much had been borrowed from Haggard.

If you're just curious about this book because it seems to be a piece of fantasy that escaped your attention, I'll warn you: not much fantasy here. No Atlantis, either, despite the title. I'm an avid reader, so I forced myself to finish this...But it was an agony of alternating boredom and frustration.

***UPDATE*** If you absolutely can't still your curiosity, I suggest you go to the Project Gutenberg website, and download the Ace edition of this story, titled "Atlantida". Yes, it's a slightly different translation, but it's free-- as opposed to paying fifteen dollars for a paperback of something in the public domain.