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    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition
    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition
    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition
    Audiobook16 hours

    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition

    Written by Jules Verne

    Narrated by B.J. Harrison

    3.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    The year is 1866 and the Pacific Ocean is being terrorized by a deadly sea monster. The U.S. government dispatches marine life expert Professor Aronnax on an extended voyage to investigate this new threat. He discovers not a monster, but a marvelous submarine vessel piloted by a deadly captain with a secret agenda.

    Heralded as the father of modern science fiction, Jules Verne demonstrates his powers of predictive intuition in this classic underwater adventure.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherB.J. Harrison
    Release dateFeb 25, 2018
    ISBN9781937091088
    20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: Classic Tales Edition
    Author

    Jules Verne

    Jules Gabriel Verne was born in the seaport of Nantes, France, in 1828 and was destined to follow his father into the legal profession. In Paris to train for the bar, he took more readily to literary life, befriending Alexander Dumas and Victor Hugo, and living by theatre managing and libretto-writing. His first science-based novel, Five Weeks in a Balloon, was issued by the influential publisher Pierre-Jules Hetzel in 1862, and made him famous. Verne and Hetzel collaborated to write dozens more such adventures, including 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in 1869 and Around the World in 80 Days in 1872. In later life Verne entered local politics at Amiens, where had had a home. He also kept a house in Paris, in the street now named Boulevard Jules Verne, and a beloved yacht, the Saint Michel, named after his son. He died in 1905.

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    Reviews for 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea

    3.5/5

    3,077 ratings101 reviews

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    • 4/5
      This is a well done audio book, the narrator does a great job and even does an excellent job with the voices. He makes the story as interesting as possible. The story itself I had always wanted to know, having heard of it my whole lofe, but the plot was disappointing. It hardly has a plot at alld At least it is so loose one hardly recognizes it, as the majority of the book is descriptions of sealife and locations, with lots of technical jargon. Which can be satisfying if you're in the mood, but tends to be a little boring. I still think it was worth the listen as it is a classic and informative. This book was more like seeing a visually pleasing painting more than like hearing a story.
    • 5/5
      Fantastic adventure. if only it were possible to build such a submarine.
    • 3/5
      I read this for the Steampunk category of the SF Reading Challenge on Shelfari.

      Although the story was very interesting and well-written, I found that it dragged at times due to the great amount of detail that Verne included. It often seemed that I was reading a natural history reference on the flora and fauna of the world's oceans.

      That said, I would recommend it since it was an enjoyable read. This would also qualify for the category of Work not originally published in English.
    • 1/5
      Wrong writer is listed. This should be fixed as soon as possible.
    • 4/5
       A barely recalled classic book, but recalled as being enjoyable. It took a while to realized that the 20,000 leagues were not about the, impossible, depth that Nemo reached, but the distance from place to place the craft traveled.
    • 3/5
      Good adventure story. I'm not really sure when I read it.
    • 5/5
      This book is one of the best by Jules Verne as far as I am concerned. Not a fast read and I am not sure if all the sea creatures he had in the book are real as well as some ot the details but still a very interesting read.A great read about history, the sea, countries, sea animals and sea plants. Captain Nemo has taken Professor Aronnax, the faithful servant of the Professor, Conseil, and the Canadian harpooner, Ned Land, as prisoners on his ship the Nautilus.The word league refers to distance and fathom is depth.Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea is the distance the book takes us on less than a ten month journey.At one point, Professor Aronnax says "I end here this catalogue, which is sometimes dry perhaps, but very exact, with a series of bony fish that I have observed..." ( I have ended the rest of what he wrote but he continued to write more about sea creatures and fish.)This book was published on 1870. I gave it a 5 star rating.
    • 2/5
      90% info dump. 10% plot
    • 3/5
      The original Captain Nemo and the Nautilus story, which takes place in the 1860s.If one view is this as a true period piece then one has to conceive of the wonder that the reader would feel on hearing about a boat that could go under the water. In this version, Captain Nemo is a partial villain as well as a hero.His eclectic attitude towards sea life and the undersea environment almost makes him a climate change advocate 140 years too early! At times zero almost repeats of what has just happened and in terms of pacing there is some slacking.However as audiobooks go particularly one that he is as old as this , this was a good listen.
    • 4/5
      Classic science fiction, adventure story. This has the crew going around the world in a submarine built and designed by Captain Nemo, a man who is avoiding governed lands. He is essentially hiding out in his submarine. The Professor, his servant and the Canadian harpoonist became prisoners of the Nautilus and not allowed to leave because the the Captain's avoidance of governed society. What I like about Jules Verne's books is his scientific details and the adventures his characters enjoy. This book covers 20,000 leagues (not depth) of the oceans including the polar regions. The book references scientist known at the time who were exploring the oceans. It also mentions The Terror and The Erebus, which I mostly recently encountered in The Terror by Dan Simmons. Verne also touches on ecology and political themes in this book. Very enjoyable and I would read it again.
    • 1/5
      This was kind of like reading a science textbook with an action scene added every couple chapters. I did actually laugh once, but other than that it was painful. I really wanted to find out if anything would happen so I listened to the whole thing, but nothing really ended up happening. It really just felt like Verne was showing off how smart he was the whole time. It was a series of, "How will we survive/conquer this problem?" and then some scientific solution. I can see some science people really digging it, but I'm not sure how it got to be so popular.One strange thing, this audio book was about 11 hours long, but I saw another version that was 18 hours long. Both claimed to be unabridged. Seems crazy that one narrator would read almost half as fast as another. This one didn't seem especially fast or anything.
    • 2/5
      A well written adventure that fails to captivate.The large majority of Twenty Thousand Leagues Under The Sea feels like a walk through a museum in your mind. When you're done looking at one exhibit you walk to the next and listen to your tour guide, in this case Aronnax, explain to you what exactly you're looking at.Unfortunately if you don't know genus' or scientific names of marine lifeforms you *still* won't know what I'm looking at most of the time.Sadly there's not much plot to go along with it. Or any most of the time. Instead you get full paragraphs explaining things that you in all likelihood don't care about. Like what kind of lens the lights on the submarine uses. For a long time the things the characters are doing and the places they visit don’t matter at all to the plot. You travel from a dull event to another dull event to "ooo sharks" and repeat.Aronnax is clearly an extremely smart guy but grovels to the psychopath that is Captain Nemo. Usually because Nemo explains how a battery works or whatever. If you introduced Aronnax to Google he'd willingly enslave himself to you forever. It honestly felt like an abusive romance. Like someone told Edward "find someone who looks at you the way Aronnax looks at Nemo" and he went out and found Bella.Nemo demands loyalty and complete obedience in return for... not killing our party? This man imprisons our three characters which they accept for far too long. By the time the three of them are like “yo maybe we should like... leave?” I was skipping paragraphs trying to get to the end.On a more positive note it reads really smooth. Much better than the only other 19th century book I’ve read, Sleepy Hollow. And there are occasionally scenes that land with an emotional punch though most of them are towards the end after you’ve already suffered through endless paragraphs telling you which cetaceans and mollusks and medusae Aronnax can currently see.2.5 due to a strong ending and good friends. Maybe 2 for continuously telling me you killed animals that wouldn’t even defend themselves.
    • 3/5
      It's cool how he used imagination and tried to keep things as scientific as possible. I'm sure this story inspired many after it.

      Merged review:

      It's cool how he used imagination and tried to keep things as scientific as possible. I'm sure this story inspired many after it.
    • 3/5
      Picked this back up after Vol I back in September. I found the first half quite a bit, well, boring, frankly. I'm glad I decided to pick it up again, though, because I found that I enjoyed Vol. II quite a bit (well, mostly). I don't know if that's due to any particular change in the narrative style and/or structure between parts, or if it was a change in my own attitude and/or circumstances coming back to it. Perhaps I just learned to handle the boring parts better.

      Verne is clearly a great describer, but I think many of the places where I got bogged down is with that description. My inner cynic keeps reminding me that he was paid by the word as this story was originally serialized. I've been assured that's not (wholly) the case, and as part of my ongoing attempt to stifle the misanthropic homunculus that whispers to me from the back of my brain, I'll give Vern the benefit of the doubt. I do suspect, however, that it was a form of Asperger's which compelled Jules to create vast lists of marine life. (I did get a kick how at one point Dr. Aronnax says that their current location didn't have very many different species of fish than a previous location, and then he went on to name them all anyway.)

      Also, as I went along I became less dogmatic about reading the explanatory notes, which sped the reading along a bit. Some of the notes in this volume are quite enlightening, but others are dreadfully boring — to the point of vying with Verne's own fish lists. I suppose that's what you get when you read a critical edition... Once I got past the urge to read the text behind every asterisk, I was better able to "lose" (in a good way) myself in the story.

      So, it was worth the read, even if it took me awhile to realize it. That said, I'm not sure I'll be reading it again anytime soon.
    • 3/5
      Lots of taxonomy (too much for me), just enough story to justify sticking with it. The story really picks up at the end.
    • 2/5
      I had mixed feelings about this one. The narration was good but the content... I couldn't decide if the author was trying to write an action/adventure book or a textbook. There are so many descriptions of marine life and landscape using scientific terminology that I sometimes felt I was attending a lecture on marine biology. Many of the action scenes were lacking in action compared to today's novels. The handful of main characters were also shallowly drawn in my opinion. Nemo's reasons for what he did were not understandably explained. And where the financing came from for his extraordinary ship? Once he has it he claims undersea treasures, but before? I don't know, it was ok but I had higher expectations going in.
    • 5/5
      The french equivalent of the great American novel Moby-Dick? There are some striking similarities and reading through 20,000 leagues under the sea it was hard to get the idea of Moby-Dick out of my head. Moby-Dick was published in 1851 and 20,000 leagues appeared in serial form in 1869 and there is evidence that Verne had read Moby-Dick by his reference to the whale ship Essex and it's destruction which inspired Melville's novel. For French language readers 20,000 leagues had always been a literary masterpiece, but English readers had to wait until 1962 for a translation that did Verne's novel any justice. The original translation and the one that you are likely to read free on the internet, cut out over a quarter of Verne's novel and bowdlerised other sections and so for English readers Vernes novel had some catching up to do.First of all the similarities: like Moby-Dick there are pages and sometimes chapters that read more like scientific research than an adventure novel, which has lead to shortened versions and films that leave out the boring stuff. Captain Nemo like Captain Ahab is a driven man that no one understands; exercising control by force of character as well as a knowledge that other people do not posses, also like Ahab he starts off by being mildly crazy, but ends up being completely insane. Most of the action takes place on the high seas or under the high seas. All of the protagonists are men, not a woman or love story anywhere. There are references to literature, to history and mythology strewn throughout the book. Verne like Melville as an author seems to be on a quest for knowledge. The protagonists are on a ship/submarine an enclosed space and are actual prisoners on the Nuatilus very similar to the crew signed up to serve on the Pequod. However it is the way the story is told that made this reader think he was reading such a similar book: interspersed with an adventure story are pages and sometimes chapters that focus on zoological or technical aspects of life in and under the oceans and on board the submarine. Much of this has little direct relevance to the storyline.The big difference is that Jules Verne's is a science fiction story which has things to say about the future, whereas Melvilles book is mainly concerned with the here and now, (1850's) but also could be said to be looking backwards at an industry, the whaling industry which was looking at an uncertain future. A simple outline to the story in 20,000 leagues... is that Professor Arronax and his domestic servant (Conseil) are on board a frigate that has been sent to search out a mysterious animal that is believed to be doing damage to shipping. The frigate attacks what it believes to be a monster and in the battle Arronax, Conseil and the harpooner Ned Land are swept overboard. they manage to swim to what turns out to be the submarine Nautilus and reluctantly captain Nemo takes them on board. The terms of their rescue is that they must remain as captives of the captain because they become party to some of the secrets of the Nautilus and Nemo is interested in Professor Arronax knowledge of marine life. The Nautilus travels around the oceans of the world with a purpose that remains obscure, and on the voyages there are some notable events, which have become famous through more popular extracts from the novel. There are fights with various sea monsters, giant sharks, giant sea spiders and a kraken (giant octopus). The battle with the savages near an island in the south seas when the Nautilus is grounded. The discovery of the underground passage linking the Red Sea to the Mediterranean. The rescue of a pearl diver off the coast of India, the visit to the lost world of Atlantis beneath the waves. Nemo and Arronax reaching the South Pole and the Nautilus stuck below the ice. The journeys on the ocean beds in full metal diving gear and oxygen equipment are some of my favourite sections of the book, because of Vernes descriptions of the world beneath the waves.The tension in the story apart from the life threatening adventures is the relationship between the four men, Nemo remains a mystery, but Arronax is full of admiration for the man he recognises as a genius and is perfectly happy to carry out his own exploratory work as a marine biologist. Ned Land is hell bent on escape but realises he jeopardises the safety of the other two and Conseils hovers between his loyalty to Arronax and his friendship with Ned Land. Opportunities for escape are rare as Nemo has a hatred for landfall, preferring to have nothing to do with the race of men that inhabit the land. His crew remain a mystery speaking in a language that is foreign to Arronax and there are few clues as to where they come from and how they got to be part of Nemo's loyal entourage. Science fiction in my opinion is all about a sense of wonder, and there is much of this in the novel, but there is also plenty of what could be termed as hard science fiction and then again there is much that is just plain descriptions of fauna and flora, perhaps the best parts of the book are when Verne manages to combine all three. His love and respect for the natural world is evident throughout his book, however a total lack of anything approaching a sense of humour is a drawback. Embarking on a reading of either of these two classics calls for some determination to get to the end, there are highs and lows in both novels, perhaps the highs in Verne's book outweighs those of Melvilles, but the lows are certainly lower; the descriptions of marine life, the outlines of historical events can be little more than list making and some of them seem to be repeated. Some of Melvilles best writing is contained in the more technical chapters, but this is not always the case with Verne, although there is evidence of scholarly work to put it all together. His knowledge of geography, meteorology and chemistry is impressive, but this reader wonders if some of it is little more than a demonstration of knowledge, I do not get the same feeling with Moby-Dick. The fact that I am able to compare both books in the same review says much for their value as important books in the literary canon. If I was a member of the crew of the Pequod or the crew of the Nautilus and was given an ultimatum by their respective captains of re-reading one of the books or else! I know which one I would choose, but I also know which one I would prefer to read again. 5 stars of course.
    • 4/5
      This book was constantly mentioned in another book i read (_All_The_Light_we_Cannot_See_ by Anthony Doerr). So I decided to read it since it's a classic. The book seems to be set in the 1860's just after the US civil war. The book is about a mysterious entity causing damage to sailing vessels. At frist it's thought to be some kind of sea monster and a specially designed US navy ship is sent to find and kill the monster. The story is told in the first person by the narrator who is a scientist. He along with two companions are thrown overboard and are taken in by the "monster" which turns out to be a submarine run by Captain Nemo and his crew. Nemo takes them all around the globe (under water, of course). It's a fun read and i recommend it. The one thing i didn't like was a constant listing of the scientific names of sea life. Over a quarter of the book is just that which gets to be a little tedious.
    • 4/5
      #BBRC #RealClassic#ReadHarder#booked2020#Popsugar#BeatthebacklistI read this story as a Great Illustrated Classic when I was a child. I remember loving it, but now I just feel cheated. The origianl story is so expressive and amazing, and all that stuff was cut out to dumb the book down for younger readers. I am no longer a fan of GIC and have not been for a while. I hate when these are the only stories kids have in their home/class or in their libraries.There were so many things I missed as a child that I catch now. Like how people thought they were hunting a giant dangerous narwhal, when actually it was the Nautilus. Or how the Nautilus was a type of prison. The same type of prison I sit in now for Covid-19. All the luxuries and things I love and plenty to keep me interested, but still isolated and scary. Until reading the full version of 20,000 Leagues I always thought of Captain Nemo as a type of pirate. He isn’t at all. He is a scared and lonely old man. Why else would he escape to the sea with no desire to see land again if he was not scared of something.I listened to this book. And while it was a bit slow, and sometimes boring as they describe the various sea creatures, overall it was a great story that I would listen to again. And to think it was written almost 150 years ago. H.G. Wells knows or guessed more about the depths of the ocean than many modern scientists. This book has held the test of time, and I think that 100 years from now it will still be considered relevant.
    • 4/5
      One of those classics I'd somehow never gotten around to reading, so I was pleased when my oldest picked this out for bedtime story. The short chapters and limited cast of characters made it well-suited for reading aloud, though I could not make myself do a Canadian accent for Ned Land -- his gruff aggressive style just kept coming out more Scottish/Appalachian.Anyway, there was some colonialist bullshit that we had to yell through/critique, but mostly this book is about marveling at the wonders of the ocean, which I can always get behind. (I mean, there's a bunch of engineering geekery that's partly devalued as just coming off foolish to modern readers.) I kept wanting to have an annotated version of this to explain to me what of the marine biology was fact vs. fiction, obscure vs. well-known at the time, etc.A good read.
    • 5/5
      this was my classic book i decided to read this year. it was a quick and easy read a little different then what i taught it was gonna be about but enjoyed it and would recommend it.
    • 4/5
      The narrator has a habit of listing by genus and phylum every single plant and animal he sees and every shipwreck that has occurred in each region he travels to, but I skimed those and the rest was pretty good. I enjoyed the odd combination of 19th-century-style entitlement with surprisingly modern-sounding environmentalism (that species has been nearly hunted to extinction and this may be the last of its kind...let's eat it! or praising nature for creating new coal deposits in the sargasso sea for humanity to use when the land-bound deposits run out, or berating the harpooner for wanting to kill a whale needlessly, then slaughtering a huge group of other whales that came to hunt the first group....) And of course, an ambiguous villain(?) is often enjoyable.
    • 3/5
      What do you get when you combine marine biology from the late 1800s and an action-adventure classic? 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea by Jules Verne, of course!

      If you haven’t already read it or seen one of the many film adaptations, the novel follows Professor Arannox, an educated gentleman, and Conseil, his servant, on their search for knowledge within the ocean’s depths. Along the way, they encounter many wonders and meet the acquaintance of some intriguing characters, including the mysterious Captain Nemo.

      When the plot focuses on the conflicts our cast of characters face on their journey, the pages fly by. From kidnappings to shipwrecks, a lot happens in what could be considered a rather short novel. Unfortunately, where there’s adventure, there’s also quite a lot of seemingly unnecessary description. Much of the book focuses on various characters making observations about fish. Unless you’re a scientist with a keen interest in the biological classification of sea creatures, there’s not much that will intrigue you in those passages. The descriptions that did not bother me were those that detailed the intricacies of Captain Nemo’s vessel, the Nautilus. At the time the novel was published, submarines were still incredibly primitive, so it’s impressive that Verne was able to predict the future, in a manner of speaking.

      All of the main and supporting characters are fascinating, to say the least. Professor Aronnax values knowledge over freedom, Conseil takes great pride in his subservient position, Ned Land has a bloodlust for the hunt, and Captain Nemo, well, we don’t know much about him, do we? The level of secrecy he exudes kept me engaged until the bitter end. Verne has a subtle way with dialogue too. There were many moments, particularly in interactions between Ned and Conseil, which left me chuckling to myself.

      20,000 Leagues is a classic for a reason. As much as I disliked the long scientific passages, the novel certainly has its merits. If you’re bothered by the extensive marine life descriptions, I highly recommend skimming or skipping them completely if you’re concerned that they’re ruining your reading experience.
    • 4/5
      Not being familiar with the comparative criticism between Verne and Wells, can only offer that I while I enjoyed Nemo's narrative and the compelling saga presented, I felt it would've benefited from some of Wells' philosophy.
    • 4/5
      20,000 Leagues Under the Sea is one of those classic science fiction books that should be on any science fiction fans reading list. Being around so long (Verne originally published the book in 1869), and available in so many versions, translations, and media, can make reviewing the book difficult. Most readers either have read the book, or will want to read it because it is one of the "classics" of the science fiction genre. That caveat being said, here's my review of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The story opens with reports of strange sightings and damage to ships by an unknown creature. The narrator, Pierre Aronnax, is a professor of the natural sciences and a medical doctor from Paris. While returning from a trip to collect fossils and other specimens from Nebraska he is given a chance to hunt down this mysterious monster aboard the ship, Abraham Lincoln. Aronnax has previously hypothesized that the creature responsible for the encounters is a large form of narwhal. Joining Aronnax on the trip is his servant, Conseil, and a whaler and harpooner, Ned Land. The Abraham Lincoln eventually encounters the supposed monster, and the three men are thrown overboard when the creature rams the ship. They are miraculously rescued when they discover that it was not a creature at all, but a submersible boat. The rest of the novel covers the various adventures and settings that Aronnax and the others discover while being the "guests" of Captain Nemo, the builder of the famed Nautilus. As with most of Verne's works, the story is told in the form of a travelogue, with the story being recounted as if reading from a journal or interview with the narrator - Professor Aronnax. The stories of adventure - traveling under Suez, hunting in a kelp forest, seeking the South Pole and being trapped in ice, and the famous attack of the Nautilus by giant squid - are interspersed with more sedate discussions of the workings of the ship, or the Professor's enthrallment with Captain Nemo. That is quite interesting since Nemo has essentially captured the three men and refuses them to ever leave the Nautilus again. Verne's gift is to create a thrilling adventure and to expound upon the wonders of technology. His description of the Nautilus and its operation is decades ahead of its time. He even describes a practical, and nearly identical to the modern equivalent, SCUBA system for breathing underwater that was about 80 years ahead of its time. Verne does miss the mark with many of his speculations about the natural world. He didn't foresee the theory of plate tectonics, and his description of Antarctica misses the mark. (And I give him creative license to include the fabled Atlantis - it was an adventure story after all.) But that doesn't detract from the adventure story that he is telling.My biggest problem with the story is with the characters. Verne spends so much time recounting the travelogue of Aronnax that the characters are not fleshed out. The only one who seems real is Aronnax himself. His two companions, the forgettable Conseil and the stereotyped Ned Land (who's last name is entirely reflected in his constant desire to flee the Nautilus) are mere window dressings for Aronnax, somebody he can reflect his own ideas upon. But what is really annoying is that we get to know so very little about Captain Nemo himself. A suburb engineer, master of the sea, fearless and stoic in the face of danger, we learn so little about his character. There are many secrets about Nemo that Verne teases the reader with, but we are never shown the answers to them, such as his motivations, the reason he quit the land to forever roam the sea, or his past. That was a disappointment. If you are a fan of science fiction I recommend that you read Verne's classic at some point. Even among his own works I do not consider it to be his best, but it is worth the read to see the early works of the science fiction genre. If you want to listen to the work (like I did) I do highly recommend the version from Tantor Media narrated by Michael Prichard. I am familiar with Prichard's narration from other works and he again delivers a great performance here. (I checked out this version from my local library.)
    • 4/5
      I suppose that as an 'abridged just for you' version of a book, I shouldn't have had my expectations up so high. But I did, and while the overall novel was great, I really, really wanted more out of this book. Especially description-wise. It kept cutting out halfway or jumping from item to item so quickly I got minor whiplash. I am unsure if an unabridged version exists, but I hope it finds its way to me at some point.

      However, all that being said, I rather enjoyed the novel. It was fantastic, if a bit brief.
    • 4/5
      To be upfront, I thought there would be a lot more action in this story. I never read it in school, so coming at it as an adult was intriguing. That being said, I was not let down. Verne is very versed in sea life (this book is chock full of jargon) and as a science nerd, it was fascinating. And somehow, through all the science and tech, he was able to create a story that is often exhilarating.
    • 4/5
      This rating is a childhood rating. Hooked me on Science Fiction when I read it.
    • 2/5
      Started off with a bang, but then got bogged down with endless description of the scenery. I guess no one ever told Verne to show rather than tell.
    • 4/5
      20,000 Leagues under the sea - Jules Verne ****Every now and then I get the urge to pick up a book that has become considered a classic, but all too often I find them far too stuffy and boring for my taste and grudgingly drag myself from cover to cover without any real enjoyment. Gulliver’s Travels bored me to tears, Robinson Crusoe cured my insomnia and Jane Eyre made me hide the razor blades… so I decided to try something a little more up to date and that had the potential for a decent adventure. 20,000 leagues seemed an obvious choice.There can’t be many people in the western world that aren’t familiar with the Jules Verne masterpiece that follows the Nautilus as it make its journey beneath the waves. Professor Aronnax and his assistant Conseil, accompanied by master harpooner Ned Land find themselves prisoners aboard the Nautilus, the mastermind of Captain Nemo, a man who has shunned living on land and now utilizes his enormous submarine and the oceans to sustain his crew. As they traverse the globe it becomes more and more apparent that Nemo is a tortured genius who is intent on vengeance for the death of his family and the small band of prisoners must decide whether to resign their lives to the wonders of the Nautilus or make a break for freedom. With danger from both Nemo’s unpredictability and the wonders of the deep it soon becomes a race against time.Many authors are called visionaries, and sometimes I think history has been a little too kind, but not in the case of Verne. The ideas he comes up with for underwater travel and the use of electricity still seem amazing now, and I can only imagine the response in 1870, and even though submarines were around then, none would have been able to undertake the voyage described. He takes the reader through the seven seas, from warm tropical waters, under Atlantic ice shelves to even mythical cities that have been lost to the waves. Obviously well researched the plant and animal life is described in immense detail and at times does come across a little bit like a school textbook, but I suppose you have to understand that the undersea world was really unknown to the majority of people at that time and this would most likely be their first introduction to it, so the more detail the better.My biggest issue came not with the novel itself, but rather selecting which one I should read. Obviously the original text was written in French and since then there have been several translations, with each differing in the language used to previous. I had never really thought about this before, and just assumed a translation would be the same regardless of who wrote it, after all a sentence in French should in theory have only one way of being translated into English. This is not the case, and although the story remains unaltered the prose is dependent upon whoever undertakes the translating and what slant they use. My other problem was finding a text that was unabridged, my version was around 300 pages long with fairly small print, but there are others that run over 500 pages. I couldn’t find anywhere on my copy that advised whether it was complete or not, but I feel it was probably abridged and therefore I lost some of the experience.All in all though, I really enjoyed the book, far more than I thought I would. I didn’t realize there was also a sequel written called ‘The Mysterious Island’. I will definitely be looking that up in the near future.