What do You think about Michael Strogoff (2015)?
The odd thing about reading this book is the feeling that you're reading a rip off, or generously, a novel heavily influenced by the works of Edgar Rice Burroughs. Much of Burroughs' style and concepts (the description of the heroes and villains, the romance, the epic journey of the hero to reach a goal to foil the plans of the antagonists of the story) are present here. But it reads like a watered down ERB book. What's odd about that is "Michael Strogoff" came first. It was published some 36 prior to ERB's first novel, "A Princess of Mars". If anything, Burroughs would be the one influenced by Verne, rather than the other way around. IMHO, Burroughs did this sort of story better. It's not that Burroughs was the better writer. Far from it. But Verne was not really the action writer Burroughs was. Jules Verne tended to be a bit pedantic in places, having learned all he could on a subject Verne would put practically all that knowledge into his novels. This works well for "20,000 Leagues Under the Sea", "From the Earth to the Moon", "A Journey to the Center of the Earth" and even, surprisingly, "Around the World in 80 Days" (which has the advantage of also being a bit of a travelogue.) "Michael Strogoff", I think, which wants to be a rousing action-adventure story, gets bogged down by these background details Verne adds to the tale. It needs to move at a swifter pace (which it admittedly does in Part II).It isn't that "Michael Strogoff" is a horrible book. It isn't. The great Jules Verne wrote it. But I don't think it's the kind of story Verne really did that well. Maybe it was the similarities to ERB's works that threw me, something I somehow never noticed in the other Jules Verne novels I read, but I just don't see MS as the masterpiece others do. I much prefer "20,000 Leagues" to "Michael Strogoff".
—Benn
MICHAEL STROGOFF, or, the Courier of the Czar. (1876). Jules Verne. ***tJules Verne (1828-1905) wrote a lot more than science fiction, as we now call the genre that he co-invented with H. G. Wells. This novel was an example of his forays into the world of the action/adventure story. It’s a tale of a mission undertaken by its hero to reach an outlying post in Siberia and deliver from the Czar of the Russias. When the telegraph line is cut between Moscow and Irkutz, the Czar looks for another way to get an urgent message to his brother, the Grand Duke, alerting him about enemy actions threatening his territory. This was the time of the Tartar Rebellion – the invasion of Siberia by the Asiatic hordes. He picks a man who comes highly recommended – Michael Strogoff – a man originally from Siberia who knows the territory and is not afraid of the dangers he knows face him to reach the Duke. Strogoff is an early super hero. Think of a Russian Rambo with the loyalty of a saint and you have a good idea of who he is. As he makes his way to Irkutz with his special message, he encounters all kinds of danger that he must overcome, including running into an evil traitor who wants to get to Irkutz before him and foil his attempts at warning the Duke. There is also a love interest, as Strogoff meets a young woman who is trying to get back to her town in Siberia, from Moscow, to hook up with her father, whom she hasn’t seen in years. Verne must have had a map of Siberia in front of him as he penned this book because he invests each town on the way with its own special set of dangers for our hero. Verne’s spelling of town names varies widely from our current ones, to the point that I couldn’t find some of them on my map, but it really didn’t matter. The whole point of his novel was to keep his readers turning pages to see how our hero gets out of the last mess that he was thrown into. Verne’s science fiction writing was arguably better than this, but, remember, he was treading on relatively new ground. So, if you are a fan of, say, “The Fugitive,” or “Indiana Jones,” then Strogoff is your kind of guy; it’s just that he is from about 125-years ago.
—Tony
The 1876 equivalent of an adrenaline-fuelled summer blockbuster super-spy, action-adventure film. Strogoff will have to fight armies, nature and an evil nemesis to try and save mother Russia. All the characters are easy-to-digest caricatures including a comedy double-act of foreign reporters - a Frenchman and a more formal Englishman. It was soon adapted into a play which, when it played in Paris, portrayed the English journalist as a buffoon; and when it transferred to London in March 1881 it was the turn of the French journalist to be ridiculous. I hope it gets picked up for a modern cinema retelling with Simon Pegg and Nick Frost as the reporters.
—Robert Cormican
