" Well, let's see. I started reading this because I was writing a zine that required some nice 19th century writing about submarines. Check. Then, after getting to part 2, i put it down for about a year. I picked it back up and recently finished it. Aside from my own need to get language/jargon relating to submarines, the rest of the story was pretty boring. Toward the end, Verne, really stepped it up to get people to the end (giant squids, maelstroms, hurricanes--great stuff). But seriously, most of the story was people on a sub, people stop at a place and put on diving suits, people leave the sub and look at fish (described sometimes in detail other times with formal scientifically derived names that really gave me no clue what they were looking at) people get back on sub, sub moves on. Then of course there are the occasional islanders--"savages"--and the sinking of some ship out to get Nemo. I just got very bored with the repetition and, honestly, the lack of character building. I didn't care about any of the characters. But hey, I got through it, it was tedious, and I'm done with it. Read it only if you have to. PS. the narrative landscape is very white and very European. "
— Spicy, 1/28/2014