Book Review: Captain Nemo by Kevin J. Anderson

About:
Captain Nemo by Kevin J. Anderson is a novel expanding the background of the famous Captain Nemo, from Jules Verne’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea and The Mysterious Island. Mr. Anderson is an award winning author, mostly known for his Star Wars novels and original sagas.

• 400 pages
• Publisher: Titan
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 9780857683427

My rat­ing for Captain Nemo — 4
Buy Captain Nemo from Amazon.com*
More Books by Kevin J. Anderson*

Thoughts:
I have heard of Kevin J. Anderson previously, I had a few guest posts done by Star Wars fans on my blog, and good word of mouth by friends. When a friend loaned me Captain Nemo by Kevin J. Anderson I was looking forward to finding out myself what the big hoopla is all about.

Right off the bat I could tell that this would be a good read. Like Verne’s books, each chapter is its own little adventure (Verne’s were serialized), full of excitement and good time. This book is the equivalent of a good pop-corn flick, full of fun, comedy, some romance, but no real underlying heavy literary themes meant to rock your world.
And that’s just fine.

I especially enjoyed two aspects of the book, literary mashups and literary hunt. Literary mashups are tricky and difficult to pull off. Combining per-existing literature to a new work of fiction can be undone quickly with even a bit of carelessness, however Mr. Anderson pulled it off. The other part, the literary hunt for Mr. Verne’s stories was especially enjoyable to me, Mr. Anderson weaved in some of Jules Verne’s most famous books as part of Nemo’s fictional biography which inspired his friend and budding author.

This was a really enjoyable story, the narrative reads like a biography and not a fictional tale, Mr. Anderson’s literary devices to pay homage to Jules Verne work very well. The story, written in a way which is reminiscent of the way Verne writes, works very well and is especially inspired.

Synopsis:
In France, 1840s, Jules Verne and his friends Andre Nemo and Caroline Aronnax dream of adventures and travels. While Caroline and Andre have their own adventures, Jules can only look from afar and write novels which are a re-telling of Nemos life.

Zohar — Man of la Book
Dis­claimer: I borrowed this book from a friend.
*Ama­zon links point to an affil­i­ate account