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it_is_mars 's review for:
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea
by Jules Verne
There are two things I hated about this book: the writing style and the content.
Of the 428 pages, I estimate about a third of that is just listing different kinds of fish. Even the narrator himself describes it as a 'dry catalogue' at one point. Did Jules Vernes just not have an editor?
Then there's the role of these fish (and literally every other animal they come across): to be destroyed, either for sport, food, or because they are an 'evil' species. The only purpose and value animals have is how tasty they are to humans, obviously!
Love the part where the narrator explains that seas will become poisoned because man is killing entire species on which the ecosystem depends, right before stocking the pantry with the formerly mentioned species of course.
If you can look past all of that, there's the white supremacy and classism permeating the whole book. Anyone outside of Western Europe is described as uncivilised. Be careful when boarding any island outside of that region, because the savages will eat you!
It was a pain to get through and I had to put this book down several times, like when the servant boy declares he would have happily suffocated to death if only to give his master one more breath because his life is worth more than his.
I assume a lot of these problems are due to the age of the book, but I don't care.
Of the 428 pages, I estimate about a third of that is just listing different kinds of fish. Even the narrator himself describes it as a 'dry catalogue' at one point. Did Jules Vernes just not have an editor?
Then there's the role of these fish (and literally every other animal they come across): to be destroyed, either for sport, food, or because they are an 'evil' species. The only purpose and value animals have is how tasty they are to humans, obviously!
Love the part where the narrator explains that seas will become poisoned because man is killing entire species on which the ecosystem depends, right before stocking the pantry with the formerly mentioned species of course.
If you can look past all of that, there's the white supremacy and classism permeating the whole book. Anyone outside of Western Europe is described as uncivilised. Be careful when boarding any island outside of that region, because the savages will eat you!
It was a pain to get through and I had to put this book down several times, like when the servant boy declares he would have happily suffocated to death if only to give his master one more breath because his life is worth more than his.
I assume a lot of these problems are due to the age of the book, but I don't care.