Pierre BenoitThe Queen of Atlantis

Interesting book. Reminded me of reading Jane Eyre,in the strange syntax, reminds me of Hitchcock in a way but I can't put my finger on why. Good but not what I expected.

Unless you're a particular fan of Pierre Benoit, you should probably skip this and read "She", by H. Rider Haggard, instead. If you've already read that, this book will just disappoint you.It was a struggle to make myself finish "Queen of Atlantis." The stories within stories continually lead to a dead end. There is no satisfactory resolution, and the character motivations are never quite convincing. I suspect some nuances have been lost through translation and the passage of time.According to the afterword, the book was an influential piece of French fiction. It was evidently a very successfully-marketed book by a fairly prominent author. However, even critics of the time recognized how much had been borrowed from Haggard.If you're just curious about this book because it seems to be a piece of fantasy that escaped your attention, I'll warn you: not much fantasy here. No Atlantis, either, despite the title. I'm an avid reader, so I forced myself to finish this...But it was an agony of alternating boredom and frustration.***UPDATE*** If you absolutely can't still your curiosity, I suggest you go to the Project Gutenberg website, and download the Ace edition of this story, titled "Atlantida". Yes, it's a slightly different translation, but it's free-- as opposed to paying fifteen dollars for a paperback of something in the public domain.