Journey to the Center of the Earth

by Jules Verne

eBook

English language

Published Nov. 12, 2022 by Standard Ebooks.

(85 reviews)

A classic science fiction novel by French writer Jules Verne, this work is one of the most well-known subterranean fictions to this day. It inspired many similar works and adaptations. First published in 1864 in French as Voyage au centre de la Terre, it was quickly translated to English by several different publishers in the 1870s. The current edition was based on the translation by Frederick Amadeus Malleson that was published by Ward Lock & Co Ltd. in 1877.

Our protagonist is Axel, whose overcautious and unadventurous spirit contrasts with that of his uncle Professor Otto Lidenbrock, an eccentric professor of geology. When Professor Lidenbrock obtains a mysterious runic-coded note in the manuscript of an Icelandic saga, he is determined to decipher it. Axel inadvertently solves the code and, much to his chagrin, discovers that it is a set of directions left by a sixteenth-century Icelandic alchemist to reach the center of the earth via the volcano Snæfelljökull. Reluctantly, Axel joins his uncle on a trip to Iceland, and with the aid of a local guide, Hans, begins an adventure towards the center of the earth, where they will encounter giant mushrooms and insects, an island with an enormous geyser, and battle pre-historic reptiles. One of Verne’s most well-known works, this novel is a testament to Verne’s love of geology, science, and cryptography.

134 editions

Tommy reviewed Voyage au centre de la Terre by Jules Verne (Livre de poche -- 2029)

Grande imagination

4 stars

L'imagination de Jules Vernes est très grande.

Si Jobling reviewed A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Beautifully descriptive story full of imagination

4 stars

First time I’ve read this and I can see why it’s a classic. Fantastical story set in a magical land with an air of realism.

egreiner reviewed A Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Here's the thing

5 stars

One of my favorite books of all time. I was introduced to this book via the 'Penguin Classics' series, the branding of which, for some reason, I was attracted to as a child. I was in second grade the first time I read it, and by fourth grade I'd been through it three or four times. However, in fourth grade we had reading goals, in which we had to read so many approved chapter books by a certain date in order to get credit for the assignment. I told my teacher, Mrs. B**, that I'd read this book before, and she did not believe me. When I insisted she accused me, in front of the entire class, of lying, and didn't let me sit down until I admitted to lying to her. Later she gave me a mercy pass of a 70 for a creative writing assignment in …

Andy reviewed Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne

Review of 'Journey to the Center of the Earth' on 'Goodreads'

2 stars

Get ready for a hike, it's pretty much all walking or boating around. Minecraft the book?

Verne front loads the racism:
Calls someone So-and-so the Jew;
Describes a sooty figurehead pipe as becoming a "negress";
References savages in South America and Africa.

But mostly just stereotypes an Icelander for the rest of the book.

mikerickson reviewed Journey to the Centre of the Earth by Jules Verne

Review of 'Journey to the Centre of the Earth' on 'Goodreads'

3 stars

To the schists succeeded the gneiss, of a stratiform structure, and remarkable for the regularity and parallelism of its laminae. Then the mica schists disposed in great flakes, which are revealed to the eye by the sparkles of the white mica.

Man, I hope you like reading about rocks!

I have a spotty track record with ~classics~, but saw this one at my local library and figured it was slim enough to give it my time. For a book as short as it is, it certainly took me a long time to get through it, which I chalk up (pun intended) to a lack of interest. If I were asked to come up with a central defining conflict of this story, anything I came up with would feel like a stretch. It really felt like Verne just wanted to write a wacky adventure and didn't care about how the characters got there because the justification was paper thin. It could basically be summed as: we have to go to the center of the earth because "we just gotta".

Axel, our protagonist, and his Uncle Lidenbrock are both minerologists, which explains why so much attention to detail is given to the rocky surroundings that make up 80% of the book, thought it's kind of fitting in retrospect. I mean, who better to send into subterranean caves for weeks on end? And early on there is an interesting scientific debate between the two of them as to whether or not it's actually possible to go to the center of the earth without, you know, getting burned up by lava. (Axel is squarely in the "we're gonna die" camp, and his uncle is in the "don't be such a baby" camp).

There are many times in which they almost die. These instances are almost all attributable to the uncle.

Either through sheer chance or due to the skills of their mostly-mute survival guide, Hans, (granted, there is a language barrier, but this character read more like a robot servant with no free will than an actual person), the party escapes all these scrapes with death.

It was a story that was propelled by sheer willpower of the uncle, who I found to be a uniquely frustrating character who was found to be consistently correct with his illogical theories almost out of direct spite of Axel and the reader. There were glimpses of story hooks and potential threads that could pull the book into a more interesting direction, but Verne chose not to. But it was fine enough and the book did what it set out to do. I'm sure it would've blown my mind had I read it when it was first published. I'm putting this one in the "liked the premise; would've done it differently" pile.