Edwin Lester Arnold (1857–1935)

Our ancient hero Phra has a severe case of Rip van Winkle Syndrome and sleep-hops his way through history, while occasionally being stalked by one of his dead wives.
This was very surprisingly good but only if you like purple prose. If your a fan of the 'full stop' for example you might be sorry to see him so infrequently, as most sentences seem to be about half a page long :) .
As with Arnold's protagonist from 'Gulliver of Mars', our hero this time is kind of an idiot, not to mention a bit show more of an ass (think 'Bruce Campbell' in the 'Evil Dead' films :P). However while that added to the frustration of reading Gulliver it adds to the comedy of this.
If you can get past the florid style this is a great romance/adventure romp through the ages.
A final warning however, as with all of this authors works it will leave you with many an unanswered question. show less

This has been credited as inspiring Edgar Rice Burroughs's Princess of Mars. They are both stories of a military man magically sent to Mars, and they both rescue Princess there. Otherwise they are very different stories. I liked this better than the Princess of Mars. The Martians Gulliver meets are reminiscent of the Eloi from the Time Machine. Beautiful, happy, lazy and carefree.

Read this and Princess of Mars back to back. Both are awful in their own way but were Princess is boring, pointless and has a main character with no personality. Gulliver of Mars is interesting and exciting with a lead that at least has a pulse. Of course Gullivers main character trait is that he's a complete tool but at least thats something. Its amazing how angry and frustrated this book made me due to its flaws. There really seemed to be a decent story trying to get out but the author show more never seemed to go where i wanted him to, plus this really feels like a 1st draft, there are so many things mentioned which then make no sense later. The best character disappears without explanation halfway through and it features one of the worst Deus Ex Machina's i've ever seen and thats after a set of them which i forgave and put it down to luck or destiny.
Still despite ALL its flaws it at least provoked a reaction from me, even if that reaction was that i wanted to track down the author and make him rewrite it properly this time. show less

Lieutenant Gulliver Jones ends up on a quest to rescue the Princess of an infantile Martian civilisation of hedonistic layabouts that he is clearly only half bothered about rescuing out of some misguided sense of duty.
After leisurely sight-seeing the Martian landscape and also meeting and greeting some friendly locals along the way, he bumbles along and somehow, more out of chance, succeeds in his mission - but only by the most contrived of plot lines imaginable, which allows him to show more continuously run away from any real conflict whilst maintaining his dignity.

This book is memorable only in the way that recovering from an illness is; and leaves you with no more desire to revisit it again.
Don't be fooled by the higher than expected marks which I think I must have given in respect of the elderly (The story was penned 105 years ago).
The story does have a couple of nice scenes: the frozen glacier of the dead sticks in my mind - but not enough to save it.

Worth the read? - NO! show less