The Lost World

The creator of Sherlock Holmes delivers a classic adventure fantasy in this tale of a trip by journalists, scientists, and adventurers to investigate rumors of dinosaurs on a mysterious plateau deep in a mythical South American jungle. Much fun and over-the-top adventure ensue. The author is ably supported by Glenn McCready, who delivers a reading very much in the nineteenth-century style. He plays up the characters' big personalities and celebrates the rather orotund style of the writing, which isn't as tight as in the Holmes books. Not for modern-fiction-only readers, this book will appeal most to lovers of nineteenth-century literature. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from March 31, 2008
In 1912, Doyle took his Victorian readers deep into the South American jungles where, high atop a treacherous plateau, a small band of British explorers encountered a terrifying world of prehistoric creatures long thought lost to the sands of time. The adventurers included a young newspaper reporter, Ed Malone; the swashbuckling aristocrat, Lord Roxton; the skeptical scientist, Professor Summerlee; and the brilliant and bombastic Professor Challenger, who leads the party. Doyle unfolds high adventure at its best with fantastic encounters with pterodactyls, stegosaurs and cunning ape -men. Glen McCready's performance captures the time and tone of Doyle's material perfectly without straying into melodrama. He nicely balances Malone's sense of youthful wonder with the professors' scientific pragmatism, while fully exploiting the humor spread strategically throughout, planting numerous chuckles among the thrills. McCready's entertaining reading more than fulfills the author's introductory wish to “give one hour of joy to the boy who's half a man, or the man who's half a boy.”

THE LOST WORLD (1912) marked the first Professor Challenger novel and a new series for Arthur Conan Doyle. The narrator is newspaperman Edward Malone, who chronicles an expedition up the Amazon to verify the existence of a prehistoric world populated by dinosaurs. Michael Prichard handles the dialogue with a good bit of bluster, which to be sure, forms a big part of Doyle's larger-than-life characters. Looking for ways to downplay some of this stridency, as Prichard admirably does with the narration, brings some necessary subtlety to a melodrama that itself can seem like something of a fossil. G.H. (c) AudioFile 2003, Portland, Maine