It is perhaps unfair to compare science fiction from 1898 to its modern equivalent, but some of it holds up remarkably well. I'm going to say that this book is not terribly well written by today's standards, and probably the only reason it made a splash in the literary world is because it shocked the Victorian sensibilities of its target audience. Which, let's be honest, were Britons living in and around London at the turn of the last century. Wells could not have predicted that this story would one day have worldwide appeal. Told in the first person, it is heavy on the place name dropping and light on the character development. It is essentially destruction porn, describing the ghastly deaths of innocents and the obliteration of landmarks. The David to the Martians' Goliath turns out in the end to be both recognizable and prescient. But the end is not particularly satisfying.