So, I finished my first book of the year the other day (yes, technically, it’s a novella, but the copy I have has 200+ pages, so it counts): The Invisible Man by H.G. Wells. It is my first H.G. Wells book and hopefully not my last. The man is a sci-fi treasure, and it’s a downright shame I haven’t read any of his works until now.
This review comes with a confession: I don’t know if I actually liked the book. I actually lean towards not liking it much, which I feel very bad about because it’s such a classic. But I went into it with one perspective and got a very different book than I was expecting, and I think that skewed my enjoyment quite a bit. I was expecting dark gothic horror, but it starts out almost comedic, the Invisible Man as sort of a surly intellectual giving the common folk a hard time. I pictured Benny Hill music a few times, and then, all of a sudden, we’re in that gothic novel I expected, as the Invisible Man goes into chapter-long monologues about his intentions and he turns murderous again the townspeople, the prankster suddenly a madman on the run.
It was an odd shift. I never quite got the mood of the book, so it might warrant another read in the future. I liked the sciency parts that make it a sci-fi classic, but it just never really connected with me, and that bugs me because it’s so iconic. But just because something is iconic doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll find it good.
Also, it probably didn’t help that I had this stuck in my head the whole time.
Books read: 001/100.
L.S. Engler 