One thing that some classic authors know how to do is spin a good yarn. A romp, a caper, and adventure, some buckle with their swash. Of course, most classics obtain such status because some people (or even a large number of people) see something in them that keeps them admired, read and therefore alive. Jules Verne is definitely one such master of the genre and having read his best known works and found them excellent, I picked up The Underground City.
I suppose considering the scale of Around the World in Eighty Days, Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Journey to the Centre of the Earth, I was expecting something a bit more eic than what I got. Which was a book about coal mining. Now in my undergraduate days, coal mining and I have a history of sorts, through a bizarrely highly marked yet probably very dull essay on the subject to parts of my dissertation, not forgetting of course I was slap bang in the middle of County Durham, a region whose history over the last couple of centuries has been inextricably linked with the activity.
Instead, this is Verne's homage to Scotland, a land which he was extremely fond of, though I did not know that beforehand. Smaller in scale it may have been, the premise being the creation of a new city, completely underground in what had previously been an abandoned mine. Yet it has in it enough mystery, suspense and romance to keep it a quick and entertaining read. Indeed it probably is a romance more than anything, both in the sense of the plot and the author's love affair with the country north of the border. He's probably more successful with the latter, his descriptions of Scotland being rather better than the romance. Not as good as his best then, but certainly not something I regret reading.
Book number: 51
Title: The Underground City
Author: Jules Verne
Category: Pre-20th century literature
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