The Underground City - Jules Verne

This is a very peculiar book. I read it these past two days on my Palm phone and I don’t quite know if I like it or not…it is really quite an odd book and very different from what you usually read about. The story begins with James Starr, manager of the Aberfoyle mine, releasing all of the workers from that mine. It had run out of coal, and was now being shut down. The book then jumps ten years to when Starr receives a letter from his old overman, Henry Ford, who supposedly has found something amazing in the old Aberfoyle mine!

He follows up on this and they are thrown into an adventure including New Aberfoyle, a mysterious girl named Nell, and the saboteur of the mine who seems bent on harming them all.

I don’t know, the plot of this book is very interesting, but definitely predictable and not one of Verne’s better books. It seems that he describes these things in a very ordinary way without much luster, and the book doesn’t feature the cutting-edge science that his other books do, such as Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea. But for a change, this book is OK to read. I would rate it about 3.5 stars out of 5…it definitely wasn’t one of my favorites but not bad.