Access Instantly The Lost World Brought To You By Arthur Conan Doyle Shared As Electronic Text

March,: I've just edited this review to correct a misspelled word,

Like one of my Goodreads friends, I should say at the outset that my review

can't add much to the excellent one already written by another friend, Lady Danielle sitelink goodreads. com/review/show/ . But I'll go ahead and share my perspective anyway, for what it's worth, While I did like the book, my rating for it wasn't quite as high as most of my friends gave it for reasons I'll indicate below, But it's a good adventure yarn, still appealing on that level evenyears after it was written, and for anyone seriously interested in the roots of modern science fiction, a mustread.
The whole SF theme of juxtaposing the prehistoric with the presentday world derives directly from this novel Doyle continues to be a serious influence on contemporary genre writers like Crichton, and a host of others in between.


Much of the novel's appeal comes from the sheer power and fascination of the concept of being able to directly experience dinosaurs firsthand, In, this idea was completely new it's less so now, but even so, it retains a lot of its intrinsic excitement, Doyle's treatment mostly builds on this advantage positively he's a very capable writer in terms of craftsmanship I don't list him as a favorite for nothing!, His plot is solid and his pacing brisk, with plenty of the jeopardies and challenges that draw readers including me to this type of fiction, He peoples the narrative with vividly drawn characters, The most obvious of these is his series character Prof, Challenger, introduced here: too big physically and in sheer force of personality to ignore, supremely egotistical, belligerent, and combative, but brilliant, ingenious, and courageous, Both Doyle's Holmes and Challenger were at least partly based on actual people the latter on Doyle's medical school professor William Rutherfurd, just as Holmes was on Rutherfurd's colleague Joseph Bell.
But the supporting characters like Lord Roxton and Prof, Summerlee are brought fully to life as well Roxton is really the most likeable of the group his character here is vastly different from the arrogant jerk in the very unfaithful madeforTV movie and series adaptation!.
Malone, the narrator and viewpoint character, is less colorful, but he's an Everyman that readers can identify with and like identifying with, as he proves himself brave and competent in various situations.
Being written at a time when literary syntax was no longer as florid and convoluted as it had been in the early and mids, the prose here is pretty straightforward in style it won't inhibit any modern reader with a good vocabulary.
And the climax of the novel leaves the reader with some of the most arresting mental images I've ever experienced,

For me, though, there were factors that kept the book from being a fourstar read, That the science is dated wasn't that big a problem for me we've explored enough of the earth by now to know that the idea of any surviving Jurassic ecosystem is pretty farfetched, but inthat wasn't the case.
Though he doesn't name the locality, Doyle actually based his physical setting for the titular Lost World on the thenwhollyunexplored high plateau of Roraima in southern Venezuela, But the author's uncritical Darwinism is more of a challenge to belief though one can, I suppose, accept Doyle's "apemen" which one character calls "missing links" here much as we accept dragons and unicorns in fantasy.
One of my Goodreads friends likes Challenger better than Holmes, but I didn't have the same reaction, Indeed, although Challenger's character fascinates, I can't really say that I like him much at all in real life, I think he'd drive me up the wall quickly if I had to be much in his company.
Lady Danielle, in her review, analyzes the patronizing treatment and negative stereotyping of the only black character in the exploring party, Zambo, and I can't improve on her comments there.
I'd add that the treatment of the HispanicIndian guide Gomez he's repeatedly referred to or identified as "halfbreed" is equally invidious, or more so Zambo at least is seen as a sympathetic character, while Gomez is a treacherous, homicidal villain.
To be sure, some blacks of that day and now and some whites exhibit traits like Zambo's, and no doubt some HispanicIndians like some whites ARE treacherous, homicidal villains.
It's the absence of any balance to those portrayals here that gives the impression that we're being invited to view every reallife black, Hispanic or Indian person that way, a kind of racial stereotyping that comes across as a sour note in the read.
The racist attitudes are matched by sexist ones I can't say that the author's portrayal of women is very favorable, That the exploring party is all male is probably to be expected in any writing from this era, but like Verne in Journey to the Center of the Earth at least in the translation I read, Doyle uses a conversation between the viewpoint character and his romantic interest at the beginning to pound home the point that adventuring is strictly a male preserve.
The lady delivers lines like, "There are heroisms all around us waiting to be done, It's for men to do them, and for women to reserve their love as a reward for such men, That's what I should like to be envied for my man," and "It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories that he had won, for they would be reflected upon me.
These are the sort of men that a woman could worship with all her soul and yet be the greater, not the less, on account of her love, honored by all the world as the inspirer of noble deeds.
" That choking noise in the background is me gagging, And finally, there's no strong message here that speaks to any truth about the human condition, nor any ideas that make you seriously think,

The negatives here, though, didn't pull down the positives enough to keep me from liking the book overall, If you can put up with the former, the latter will provide you with some rousing entertainment!,TU WCALE NIE BYŁO DINOZAURÓW :
Ale książka bardzo przyjemna Professor ChallengerDoyle's most famous character after Sherlock Holmesleads an expedition into the deepest jungles of South America.
Together, the mena young journalist, an adventurer and an aristocratalong with their bearers and guides, search for a rumored country and encounter savagery, hardship and betrayal on the way.
But things get worse as they get closer to the hidden world they seek, Trapped on an isolated plateau, menaced by hungry carnosaurs, it begins to look as though the expedition may never return, “He would be a harder, sterner man, not so ready to adapt himself to a silly girl's whim, But, above all, he must be a man who could do, who could act, who could look Death in the face and have no fear of him, a man of great deeds and strange experiences.
It is never a man that I should love, but always the glories he had won for they would be reflected upon me, Think of Richard Burton!”

What Oh sitelinkthis Richard Burton! I dont want to post a photo of the explorer Burton too many pics in this review already but he looks a bit like Freddy Mercury.
Ah! That crazy little thing called love,

The above opening quote is spoken by Gladys, the love of Edward Malones life, Malone you see is the first person narrator of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles dinotastic The Lost World, So, basicallyin order to impress Gladysthe hapless Malone goes on an expedition to South America with the eccentric and very illtempered Professor Challenger who really lives up to his name, also accompanied by a professional jungle adventurer and a biologist.
The mission is to bring proof of prehistoric creatures Prof Challenger claims to exist on a plateau he found there on a previous visit, They do, of course, find loads of dinosaurs and other weird critters, otherwise this novel would be pointless, Much protoJurassic Park adventuring ensues,

When I read this book as a teen, during the first half of the book I was thinking “enough of all this stuff in London, bring on the dinos already!”.
Indeed the first half of The Lost World is all about introducing the colorful characters, and establishing their various motives for the expedition, As a more patient adult reader, I quite enjoyed these earlier chapters, especially the memorable introduction of Professor Challenger who prefers to let his fists do the talking when somebody even slightly annoys him.
The little punchup he has with Malone is quite hilarious, I also enjoy the nonsense with Gladys and the riotous medical students,

I cannot help but admire the way Conan Doyle skillfully builds up the narrative, from the drawing of a stegosaurus by a dead artist

to the teams suddenly coming upon some iguanodons, to other deadly encounters.


Once the dinosaurs start to appear the book becomes very fastpaced, with the characters getting into scrapes on almost every page,

It is a shame that Professor Challenger is nearly as wellknown as Conan Doyles most legendary creation Sherlock Holmes, in his ways he is just as intriguing, with his superb intellect paired with an uncontrollable temper.


That's him! Professor Challenger

I am not sure about the scientific feasibility of the plateau which somehow manages to save prehistoric animals from extinction.
Seems a bit dodgy, but who cares, right The many scenes of dinosaur attacks are marvelously vividly written, I particularly love the stuff with the pterodactyls,
.

I dont really have a lot more to say about The Lost World, any more plot details would probably spoil the book for you.
If you are one of those people who have never read a classic published over a century ago because you have the impression that they may be too stuffy for you then perhaps The Lost World is the ideal one to check out.
It really is tremendous old school fun, If you are a Jurassic Park fan this book is a must, Michael Crichtonsnovel sitelinkThe Lost World is basically a reboot of this novel, I suppose the title is a tribute to Conan Doyle.
I cant think of any more ifs or buts, The Lost World should appeal to just about anybody, My only complaint is the absence of any tyrannosaurus rex!

Notes
Audiobook credit: sitelinkFabulous Librivox free audiobook, very entertainingly read by Bob Neufeld.
Thank you!

There is only one other Professor Challenger novel, sitelink The Land of Mist, by all account it is an unreadable mess, written late in his career when Conan Doyle, grieving from the loss of his wife and child, became involved in spiritualism.
His Prof Challenger short stories sitelink The Poison Belt, sitelink When the World Screamed, and sitelink The Disintegration Machine are all fun, though,

sitelink
Awesomemovie poster, anachronistic sexy jungle girl notwithstanding click to enlarge

Quotes
“Our young friend makes up for many obvious mental lacunae by some measure of primitive common sense”

“He's as clever as they make 'ema fullcharged battery of force and vitality, but a quarrelsome, illconditioned faddist”

“An area, as large perhaps as Sussex, has been lifted up en bloc with all its living contents, and cut off by perpendicular precipices of a hardness which defies erosion from all the rest of the continent.
What is the result Why, the ordinary laws of Nature are suspended, The various checks which influence the struggle for existence in the world at large are all neutralized or altered, Creatures survive which would otherwise disappear, ”.