While in Flagstaff I finished reading Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea, my third Jules Verne novel in the last six weeks.
I am a glutton for punishment, I suppose. Verne's novels, as I've mentioned, are very harrowing and often stressful read. In each of the three novels I just read, there are at least three distinct life-threatening scenarios that the hero or main characters face. One is near the beginning of the story, one in the middle, and one at the climax. The scenes place the characters in bleak and apparently hopeless situations, from which they are rescued through their own pluck, and by fate.
For example in Twenty Thousand Leagues, these three episodes are:
1. Two main characters lost overboard in the ocean watching their ship sail away into the distance, and struggling to stay afloat with all their might.
2. Entire submarine being trapped underwater in Antarctic ice bergs and all characters suffocating from lack of oxygen while fighting off being crushed by the ice.
3. Main characters in a small boat being sucked into the maelstrom off coast of Norway.
I knew the pattern so I expected these incidents. Nevertheless it is getting a bit much for me. So I've decided to follow up with one last Verne novel on Kindle for now, Around the World in Eighty Days. I'm hoping it is a wee bit lighter, all in all.
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