Reviews

Me daba mucha curiosidad, además porque es claramente anterior a las películas de parque jurásico y los libros. Es entretenida y uno puede rastrear influencias a lo que vino después. Además me daba mucha curiosidad leer algo del autor y que no fuera sobre Sherlock Holmes.

rui_leite's review against another edition

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3.0

Now, the first thing I had to keep reminding myself while I was going through this book was that I was, in fact, reading a very influential work in its genre, so most of it would be familiar. And yes, all the elements, now clichéd, were there. There was the expedition started out by a scientific dispute, there was the Lost Isolated Land in the middle of a jungle, there were dinosaurs that tried to kill people just for the small nutritional value they might provide (or something) and other giant reptiles which simply behaved like landscape so people could look at them and be amazed. It was still fun and entertaining, don’t get me wrong, just not as surprising as it probably was when it was first written.

Then, of course, there were also the natives, a bit too willing to behave like docile pets to the oh so awesome European Men. And this is where the thing really gets dated. I think it will be hard for any modern day reader, with at least an half working brain cell not to cringe at some of Lord John Roxton’s (the obligatory Great White Hunter), actions and opinions. Hell, almost every character in the book has its moment of condescending or right down disgusting racism (towards the end it gets really hard to swallow), but Roxton does take the cake. And the worst is that you can clearly see the is supposed to be admired. Now this could have been be a bit easier to forgive as “a product of its time” if I hadn’t read Well’s “The First Man In The Moon” earlier this year and found these exact same subjects treated in a much more wise and critic way. Still, I guess, it would not be fair to downrate the book just for that, it was clearly written merely for entertainment, not as a reflection on colonialism or something of the sort, and so it embraces without questioning the values of the society. To be honest, you can see that the characters are all basically decent people, who are simply taking the gung-ho approach to “exploration” so popular at the time.

And if the plot was not very surprising, I have to say, the charterers on the other hand very much saved the book (yes, even Roxton, once you get used to him).
Ed Malone, who is also the narrator, might come across as a bit of a ninnie sometimes, but I could not help but sympathize with his motives for joining the adventure, I simply cannot hate a guy who actually says the words “Oh, Gladys” out loud and does not feel ridiculous. He was a good kid with a very stupid motivation...but, to quote Challenger, “boys will be boys”...

Then there’s professor Summerlee, a man who was clearly more suited for a classroom environment but who found himself dragged to the middle of the Amazonian forest where he had to run away from dinosaurs, ape men and other stuff trying to kill him. In fact he has two of the funniest lines in the whole book, the first when the group notices they are stranded in a very hostile area and are trying to decide what to do, he argues that they should be trying to find a way out “because he has students in London at the hands of a substitute professor with dubious credentials”. The other is when towards the end he very much sums his whole views of the situation by saying “I assure you that I little thought when I left my professorial chair in London that it was for the purpose of heading a raid of savages upon a colony of anthropoid apes”. Oh and his constant arguments with Professor Challenger really deserve being read. To me, things like these just make to book so much more enjoyable.

And yes, I could not forget Professor Challenger, the motor behind this quest and, to me, the crown jewel of the cast. A man with a great scientific mind but an even greater ego, who shouts, boasts and bosses everyone all the time and is just a pure delight to read. Wherever the man went, confusion (and probably fights) would follow. I swear, there where some chapters entirely saved just by his moments. In fact it will also be because of him that I will be picking up the other two books in the “Professor Challenger” series at some point. I just want to read the man shouting, and boasting and bursting in wherever he likes some more, he deserves it. I think I’d even read something about Challenger going out to buy some stamps and take care of some paperwork, that might be fun.

In the end it is funny to notice that, despite all the greatness of the setting and the ideas behind it, it was the characters, with their quirks and oddities that made the book enjoyable, not the bloody dinosaurs or even the adventure itself. Those, by our time's standards, would just not be enough.

Still, before I forget, let me just say there’s also a giant guinea pig at some point…simply thought it was worth mentioning because you never know what might strike someone's fancy...

warrenl's review against another edition

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4.0

By the time Malone had finished describing his first encounter with the extraordinary, blustering Professor Challenger, there was, in my mind, only one actor to play the part. Brian Blessed! Picture him fresh from the set of The Black Adder, ditching his armour and donning his pith helmet, bellow and malevolent glare intact. Blessed was Challenger for me, throughout the rest of the book. A hearty, king-sized actor for a hearty, king-sized character.

And off we tramp into the vast, unexplored jungles of the Amazon, Professor Brian and his gang of intrepid, unfazed, courageous white men with guns (plenty of them), accompanied by the usual Negro servant of giant proportions and unbreakable loyalty, a couple of swarthy half-breeds nursing evil intent, and a bunch of Indian navvies to carry the provisions. What more does one need in a proper adventure story? Well, action of course, occasioned in this case by a bunch of hungry dinosaurs, and some aggressive anthropoids who are eventually rounded up and pushed off a cliff in the name of human primacy. Yay! The humans won! The course of destiny is corrected, and everybody goes home a hero.

I loved this book, like I loved King Solomon's Mines. It made me proud to be a white man of intrepid colonial descent. However I have to deduct a star, if only because the politically correct and culturally sensitive gender-non-specific global citizen of the 21st century within struggles with the idea that 56 (or however many it was) new species of Lepidoptera are worthy of scientific curiosity; but some rather defensive anthropoids are monsters that must be shot, speared and pushed off a cliff. It's all very Cortes. But I suppose in 1913 the sun still hadn't set on Conan Doyle's British Empire.

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