# LBL Review An Antarctic Mystery by Jules Verne



## Lobolover (May 10, 2010)

First things first I refuse to call it "The Sphinx of the Ice fields" even though that is the original title . I barely even have the strength to call it "An Antarctic Mystery" , because , well , _there is no mystery_ !


To begin with , I think Verne must have realy hated the ending to "Arthur Gordon Pym" . So much so that he devoted writing an entiere novel to completely disown all and any supernatural or peculiar phenomena .


Let us begin at the begining : Our narrator , a mister Jeorling , of comparatively large fortune , spends his time on the Kerguelen islands to due some.....natural research of some kind . The reason thereto is never explained , as is the narrator's backstory . We find this humble gentleman bored out of his skull on the island hoping to get off of it on the next ship , the Halbrane . The captain refuses at first but then , when Jeorling says he's from Conecticut (which never has any bearing on anything ever again) , he suddenly changes his mind and lets him onboard .


Captain Len Guy then shocks Jeorling by claiming he believes that "The Narrative of Arthurt Gordon Pym" by Poe relates actual facts . He even wants to try saving any possible survivors of the Tsalal ambush....eleven years thereafter . It never ocurs to the captain that perhaps Jeorling's suspicion about his mania could be dispersed by firstly mentioning that the captain of the ship Jane from said book was his brother . Instead he only reveals it after certain......implausible circumstances .


And I don't mean implausible as in _"finding a diamond encrusted platinum express card with unlimited withdrawal complete with the PIN code" _, but more like _"finding the Holy Grail in your back hard....in the septic" _. Literaly , just as the Captain sails towards Tristan D' Acunha , their ship just happens to come across a floating ice berg with the body of one of the men from Jane , the ship he wants to go rescue , complete with a handy notebook explaining the situation of his comrades . 


Oh but wait ! It gets worse . On the Falklands they hire new men for a polar expedition to try and reach Tsalal.....and wouldn't you know it , the half indian looking person who joins at the last minute turns out to look continously to the South and upon landing on Bennet island seems to know his way about . Yet neither Jeorling nor the Captain make any sort of natural conclution .
The walls of Rome weren't nearly as thick .


The journey itself until reaching the Pole is rather....uneventfull . Most chapters consits of "Some slight anoyance tarnished the perfection of our Joruney in the morning . By noon it went away" . Rinse and repeat for twenty chapters .


Then after we reach Tsalal island , Verne has the briliant strategy to.....let everything from the Poe novel simply dissapear . All islanders are gone , as are _all the unusual phenomena _and animals asociated with the island . So there's hollow rubble . And all the other islands are gone to , so any hope of uncovering more about the natives or any of the secrets asociated therewith - gone . All thanks to the suposed handy unseen earthquake .


We then travel further onwards until we get hit by an iceberg . The ship , after being nearly launched back to sea , is destroyed and we have to go live on the iceberg till we ram into dry land .


Coincidently by this time Verne has put it upon himself to negate all the phenomena observed by Pym at the end of the novel . All of them . No hot water , no abnormaly large birds , no white ash , nothing . By this time the mysterious new sailor admits that he is in fact Dirk Peters , who states Pym is stil at the pole , and also negates all of the events he was present to in the original novel , saying he "does not remember" .


Oh it gets better . On the island the rowboat is stolen by the side of the disenter Hearn . The captain and Jeorling along with a few others are forced to stay on their new island but - another rowboat just happens to sail towards the island . And who is inside there ?


The people Guy came to rescue . Even his brother . They just happened to land at this exact same island at roughly the same time , after eleven years of being in the region . 


It gets better . You rememeber the earthquake I mentioned earlier ? Captain Willian Guy and co forget to confirm it . Nice . Make more plotholes , Verne , it's not like Tiger being alive and on Tsalal contrary to any mention in the original after the sinking of the Grampus is _enough _. 


On their merry way in their rowboat , they see the smashed remains of Hearn's boar as well as a few bodies and they finaly - finaly come face to face with the titular "Ice Sphinx"......in the penultimate chapter . Aparently it's some sort of huge natural magnet that draws on itself all metalic materials - and Pym , whose shrunked body is found hanging hanged at the side of the sphinx .


Did that image excite your curiosity ? Raise your interest ? Awaken your sense for the weird and extra-ordinary ?


Verne :"Good ,allow me to destroy it in the next paragraph !"


Evidently , Pym had a freak acident , caused by the magnetic sphinx , which drew his gun to it's side so fast it hanged him in the process .


Oh joy .


The novel ends with our herous dying horribly as they deser- I mean , being saved by an american ship after passing the polar ice barrier .


Verne then ends the novel saying there are stil many secrets concerning the arctic which are left hidden .


No wonder considering you did nothing to lift _any _of them . 


My one question is : Why Verne ? Why did you write this sequel ? All it does is meander for 200 pages on a boring boat ride , then resolves itself in the most improbable manner imaginable and ends with having negated everything extraordinary about the ending .


I certainly hopes another sequel to "Pym" , Charles Romyn Dake's 1889 "A Strange DISCOVERY" fares better .

My rating is : 3.5 out of 11 .


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