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3.11 AVERAGE
3.11 AVERAGE
adventurous
mysterious
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
No
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
What a perplexing book... I genuinely can't fully tell if it's just a bad book that fails at the fundamentals of novel-construction or if it's secretly a work of genius that I'm just not getting lol.
Conceptually, this book is up my alley because I love 19th century literature and I love sailing and exploration history. This has elements of sci-fi and cosmic horror, especially towards the end, which is pretty cool considering it was published in 1838. It deserves credit for that alone. Its influence cannot be underestimated; I was constantly getting very overt Melville, Verne, and Lovecraft vibes from this. And undoubtedly Poe is a good writer... I mean, it's Edgar Allan Poe, it's hard to go wrong with the prose in here. Very engaging with some genuinely harrowing moments, so overall I had a decent time reading this and don't regret it.
HOWEVER... this novel is kind of a mess lol. The edition I read has editor notes that keep pointing out the information about sailing and biogeography that Poe gets completely wrong. I wouldn't mind if Poe didn't have literal chapters devoted to infodumping. And it's so much worse than a typical Melville misinformationdump because Poe's not even funny.
It's also just a terribly plotted book with major contrivances, inconsistencies and loose ends. I won't list the plot-related issues because of spoilers, but I think anybody who reads this book will notice them pretty easily. The overall storyline and genre of the novel also keeps shifting, almost like episodic storytelling, except none of the episodes have satisfying endings, there's no interesting character development, and nothing really comes together in the end. In fact, this book has probably the most abrupt ending I've ever had to read. You can spin it as Poe being a subversive genius defying genre conventions... I can almost buy into this because I do sort of admire the effect the ending has... but if I'm going to be honest, it feels much more like Poe just didn't know how to write a full-length novel and gave up at the end and probably didn't bother to spend much time proofreading any of it.
The final nail in the coffin that stops me from deciding this work is secretly genius is the racism... it's REALLY bad. I can usually overlook racial biases in old books like these because it was so long ago, but this feels alarmingly racist even by the standards of Poe's time. I know there were American authors being much more thoughtful regarding how they handled the diversity of shipboard life and imperial interactions. Poe succumbs to just about every racist trope there is without much thought, it's genuinely painful to read at points.
Poe himself apparently called this book "silly".... yeah. It's silly alright. I'll give it 1 star for being so admirably perplexing and 1 star for its incredible influence, but otherwise... Poe, I think you better stick to writing short stories...
Conceptually, this book is up my alley because I love 19th century literature and I love sailing and exploration history. This has elements of sci-fi and cosmic horror, especially towards the end, which is pretty cool considering it was published in 1838. It deserves credit for that alone. Its influence cannot be underestimated; I was constantly getting very overt Melville, Verne, and Lovecraft vibes from this. And undoubtedly Poe is a good writer... I mean, it's Edgar Allan Poe, it's hard to go wrong with the prose in here. Very engaging with some genuinely harrowing moments, so overall I had a decent time reading this and don't regret it.
HOWEVER... this novel is kind of a mess lol. The edition I read has editor notes that keep pointing out the information about sailing and biogeography that Poe gets completely wrong. I wouldn't mind if Poe didn't have literal chapters devoted to infodumping. And it's so much worse than a typical Melville misinformationdump because Poe's not even funny.
It's also just a terribly plotted book with major contrivances, inconsistencies and loose ends. I won't list the plot-related issues because of spoilers, but I think anybody who reads this book will notice them pretty easily. The overall storyline and genre of the novel also keeps shifting, almost like episodic storytelling, except none of the episodes have satisfying endings, there's no interesting character development, and nothing really comes together in the end. In fact, this book has probably the most abrupt ending I've ever had to read. You can spin it as Poe being a subversive genius defying genre conventions... I can almost buy into this because I do sort of admire the effect the ending has... but if I'm going to be honest, it feels much more like Poe just didn't know how to write a full-length novel and gave up at the end and probably didn't bother to spend much time proofreading any of it.
The final nail in the coffin that stops me from deciding this work is secretly genius is the racism... it's REALLY bad. I can usually overlook racial biases in old books like these because it was so long ago, but this feels alarmingly racist even by the standards of Poe's time. I know there were American authors being much more thoughtful regarding how they handled the diversity of shipboard life and imperial interactions. Poe succumbs to just about every racist trope there is without much thought, it's genuinely painful to read at points.
Poe himself apparently called this book "silly".... yeah. It's silly alright. I'll give it 1 star for being so admirably perplexing and 1 star for its incredible influence, but otherwise... Poe, I think you better stick to writing short stories...
Tedious, with exhaustive descriptions. This is a series of adventures without any satisfying resolution to them. Much like reading diaries.
There are some exciting moments, but mostly I wanted the story to end. Reminded me a little of the serial comics in the newspaper with EVERY COMMENT WRITTEN IN CAPS!! WITH TWO EXCLAMATION MARKS!! (Might have been Rex Morgan, M.D. but there was another similar one). Fine in small doses, but exhausting overall.
There are some exciting moments, but mostly I wanted the story to end. Reminded me a little of the serial comics in the newspaper with EVERY COMMENT WRITTEN IN CAPS!! WITH TWO EXCLAMATION MARKS!! (Might have been Rex Morgan, M.D. but there was another similar one). Fine in small doses, but exhausting overall.
Weird. Parts of it were neat and I kept wanting to like it. Maybe I just don't get it. It was too choppy and it felt like it changed directions to many times.
adventurous
dark
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
informative
mysterious
tense
medium-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Plot
Strong character development:
No
Loveable characters:
Complicated
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
adventurous
challenging
dark
mysterious
tense
slow-paced
Plot or Character Driven:
Character
Strong character development:
Yes
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
Complicated
adventurous
dark
medium-paced
Loveable characters:
No
Diverse cast of characters:
Complicated
Flaws of characters a main focus:
No
I loved the seafaring adventure story of the first half of the book but I got lost midway when the coordinates and sailing stuff got super heavy! It felt like there was no plot just boat. The end was exciting again but also wierd. Overall Classic Gothic Read very similar to Dracula in excitement/boring levels