The Poison Belt

3 - 3.5 ⭐️

This was a rather interesting read. It was nice to see the old characters and consider the philosophical musing of the author.
However, I must admit that the premise on which this whole book was built was quite shaky and while the situation was interesting, I ultimately couldn't take it seriously.
I did like how the author ended the story, though. Ambiguity is everything when it comes to stories like this and I loved how he maintained it, without leaving anything unresolved.

Another hard one to rate. It was an interesting little thought experiment, but... eh... shockingly little concern shown to the consequences.
Like the train accident. Hey ho, who cares, they were all already dead. Oops, they weren't! What ho. Bah humbug. Think about waking up in the middle of the train accident, maybe injured, and...
Or the little detail of “who's going to do all the work that is needed for these people to survive?” Apparently bread and ink just magically appeared in their houses.
Nah. This book shouldn't even exist.

This short story - less than 100 pages - forms the second of Conan Doyle's Professor Challenger series. We have the same cast of characters - Challenger, of course, Professor Summerlee, Lord John Roxton and Malone, the journalist who is our narrator. They are joined in this case by Challenger's wife.

There is very little to the plot, so spoilers abound I suspect, but most of this is pretty obvious from the outset. There a confused reports of large scale rioting and unrest in far away parts of the world, and according to Challenger the earth is passing through a poison belt of deadly ether. Challenger invites his companions to his house, bringing with them canisters of oxygen - yet they fail for foresee the obvious use of these.

So as they watch from windows where the local population collapse and die, they eventually use up their oxygen supply and preparing them selves for a final journey open the door. It is obvious from the outset that the worlds population don't die, but I won't spoil the fairly obvious ending.

I will say that this didn't come close to the highs of The Lost World, and the three stars awarded are probably ‘only just'.