Jason Silver

Wednesday, March 10th, 2004

Journey to The Center of Boredom

OK, this was one of the worst books I've ever read. There was barely a moment of enjoyment, hardly a time when I didn't need to engage Suspension of Disbelief.

Journey to the Center of the Earth was so unbelievable-- so incredulous-- I found it very difficult to enjoy.

The basic idea is that a professor and his nephew hire an Icelander to be their guide through a passage in a volcano in Iceland. This passage takes them miles below the earth's crust where they find a subterranean ocean. They sail for days on the ocean-- observing sea monsters and extinct dinosaurs-- on a makeshift raft crafted from giant underground mushroom-trees. A storm forces them back to their starting shore in minutes, where they discover a doorway they had overlooked before-- which is blocked by a giant boulder. They blast a hole in this passage with gunpowder, inadvertently causing a volcanic eruption which spits them up to Italy on the earth's surface.

That's it.

The characters are shallow and unbelievable. Everything's so overly scientific and completely unbelievable.
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I heartily recommend you do not read this book.

~Jason