The Poison Belt

Review ebook The Poison Belt

Oh, Sir Arthur…you sage, you luminary, you genius!! What a memorable, momentous achievement, my good chap! Simply stupendous!! It’s just

A singularly superb accomplishment!!

Oh, forgive my loquaciousness, I don’t mean to prattle on so (you certainly never would), but I just find it so spirited and impressive.

Hmm…pardon? To what am I referring…oh, excuse me. Let me explain.

First, you create one of the most iconic literary characters in all of history and easily the most celebrated det Oh, Sir Arthur…you sage, you luminary, you genius!! What a memorable, momentous achievement, my good chap! Simply stupendous!! It’s just

A singularly superb accomplishment!!

Oh, forgive my loquaciousness, I don’t mean to prattle on so (you certainly never would), but I just find it so spirited and impressive.

Hmm…pardon? To what am I referring…oh, excuse me. Let me explain.

First, you create one of the most iconic literary characters in all of history and easily the most celebrated detective of all time…namely Batman Sherlock Holmes. You then create dozens of stories featuring The World’s Greatest Detective that enjoy such incredible popularity that the masses salivates at the mere hint a new story is going to be released.

So what do you, the great Sir Arthur, do?

You use that enormous popularity as a spring board to finally publish that novel that’s been kicking around in your brain for years. You know the one called The Lost World starring that other intrepid genius, Professor Challenger. The character you created after that petulant scoundrel H.G. Wells called you a “one hit wonder” and wagered that you couldn’t produce another sustainable literary character to save your life.

Well, you certainly showed that smack-talking assclown, did you not?

Hell, you already had a built-in audience for the novel, especially since the publisher duplicitously cleverly decided to downplay the fact that Sherlock Holmes was not the star of the novel. And lo and behold, the book turned out to be fairly popular and the people genuinely seemed to like Professor Challenger, seeing him as kind of a rugged, abrasive mirror to the Great Detective.

Of course, The Lost World was certainly not as popular (or as profitable) as Sherlock Holmes. So being the astute businessman that you are, you naturally decided to focus the brunt of your creative energy into producing the next Holmes masterpiece. HOWEVER, that certainly didn’t mean, in the interim, that the money had to stop rolling in now did it. Of course not.

You’re Sir Arthur Conan Doyle for crying out loud! You could wipe your ass and put your name on it and it would be a bestseller.

What to do, what to do….WAIT, you said…how about a sequel to The Lost World? Of course, no sequel was ever intended and you didn’t have the foggiest whiff of a clue of an idea what the plot for such a story would be. BAH!! Details, merely details. A lesser person might have given up, but not you sir.

YOU are Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.

So you let your mind go blank and clamped onto the first thought that popped into your noggin. Suddenly, it hit you. What was it that the homeless opium addict was ranting about the other night when he passed you on the street? You think back…right before you pushed him down into the gutter and beat him with your cane for asking you for some change. It was something about the air being poisoned and Judgment Day and the world’s pending destruction…..and you think PERFECT!! All I have to do is play with that and throw Professor Challenger into the mix and it practically writes itself.

Or course, a lesser writer might have delayed putting ink to paper until they had researched the science thoroughly in order to make the plot as accurate as possible. I can see you now Sir Arthur, staring at such a cad with a long, perplexed look before finally shaking your head in bewilderment at the naivete of some people. Without further delay, you sit down, begin to write…..AND THE POISON BELT IS BORN!!!!
.
.
.
.
Okay, while the above was just me being playful, it was inspired by the kind of thoughts that kept occurring to me while I was reading this. Don’t get me wrong, the story is not BAD and I have no complaints about Doyle’s prose as he was a good writer. I just didn’t find the plot or the characters (except for Professor Challenger) very interesting or compelling. He just seemed to have phoned this one in.

The story basically involves a poisonous belt of “aether” (the substance that a century ago was believed to have occupied all of space and acted as a physical medium for other substances) passing over the Earth from space and apparently killing everyone except for Professor Challenger and his three cohorts from The Lost World who are protected as a result of Challenger’s foresight and preparations. The four people are stuck inside a room while the event occurs and eventually come out into the world to see the effects of the tragedy. THAT…IS…BASICALLY…IT!!!

Overall, I just wasn’t that interested in the story and so give it a passing great for quality of prose and an interesting main character but can’t go so far as to say I like it. It was just okay. 2.0 to 2.5 stars.
…more