Where It's Not Science Fiction, but It's Fun

Around the World in Eighty Days by Jules Verne
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

This was surprisingly entertaining.

I read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea a while ago, and I didn't really like it. I thought that was the one I was most likely to enjoy. I had the opposite expectation for this one, and yet it turned out to be pretty fun. I thought there was supposed to be some old-fashioned science fiction elements in it, and there were none, but it worked fine as an adventure novel.

There are some serious flaws in the work, including racist and Eurocentric views that can't be glossed over, so this book wouldn't do well, say, in a modern classroom. Unless you wanted to look specifically at those topics, I suppose. But these flaws are not unexpected. (The anti-American language and bias was a little unexpected, but I kinda laughed at it. Between Charles Dickens, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Jules Verne, one can see that Europeans have been maligning Americans as fools and thugs for a long time.)

Otherwise, the novel is successful, IMO. It's engaging and well paced with characters I was interested in. There's also something exciting about the world at that time--bigger and less thoroughly understood with more adventures possible than now. Steamboats and trains are in a nice groove between horses and sailing ships on one hand and cars and jets on the other. I love that Indiana Jones adventure vibe.

Anyway, it gives me hope that I may enjoy the other stories waiting for me in this omnibus edition, eventually. We'll see.

Recommended, with caveats regarding 19th century colonial attitudes.

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