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The Underground City
The Underground City
The Underground City
Ebook184 pages2 hours

The Underground City

Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars

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The Underground City is a novel by the French writer Jules Verne, serialized in Le Temps in March and April 1877 and published immediately afterward by Pierre-Jules Hetzel. Covering a time span of over ten years, this novel follows the fortunes of the mining community of Aberfoyle near Stirling, Scotland. Receiving a letter from an old colleague, mining engineer James Starr sets off for the old Aberfoyle mine, thought to have been mined out ten years earlier. Starr finds mine overman Simon Ford and his family living in a cottage deep inside the mine; he is astonished to find that Ford has made a discovery of the presence of a large vein of coal. Accompanying Simon Ford are his wife, Madge, and adult son, Harry. From the outset, mysterious and unexplained happenings start to occur around the main characters, attributed initially to goblins and firemaidens. Soon after the discovery of the new vein of coal, the community is revitalised with a whole town growing up around the underground lake called Loch Malcolm. Suspicious of a malevolent force at work, Harry continues his explorations of the cavern system, where down a deep shaft, he discovers a young orphan girl named Nell. Over the course of the next few years Nell is adopted by Simon and Madge but reveals nothing of where she came from, only that she had never been out of the mine. Eventually, when Harry and Nell announce their marriage, the mysterious occurrences come to a head. It becomes clear that all of the happenings have been caused by Silfax, another former employee of the mine, who along with his trained snowy owl has inhabited the mine since its closure.
LanguageEnglish
Release dateJun 3, 2017
ISBN9783961899593
Author

Jules Verne

Victor Marie Hugo (1802–1885) was a French poet, novelist, and dramatist of the Romantic movement and is considered one of the greatest French writers. Hugo’s best-known works are the novels Les Misérables, 1862, and The Hunchbak of Notre-Dame, 1831, both of which have had several adaptations for stage and screen.

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Rating: 3.4675324675324677 out of 5 stars
3.5/5

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  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    Not one of his better known novels, the characters here are all totally unbelievable and the basic plot pretty daft (a common point made against Verne plots, but more than usually evident here), though there are some moments of quite good suspense. As a SAD sufferer I found the idea of so many people willing to live permanently underground quite horrible and entirely unfeasible. What comes across most clearly here is Verne's love of Scotland as some chapters are brain dumps of Scottish geography, history, culture and literature.
  • Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
    3/5
    This was a fairly short and straightforward novel by Jules Verne with some exceptions that proved to be welcome surprises. Overall, the plot is engaging and the characters are provided with enough background, exploration, and originality as to make the tale appealing to me as a reader. This is a good Verne novel, and fans of his work should not skip this one.3.25 stars.

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The Underground City - Jules Verne

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