What Da Cover Says: ‘Leaving England June, to explore rivers Central Brazil, if possible ascertain fate Colonel Fawcett; abundance game, big and exceptional fishing; room for two more guns’ – read the advertisement in the Agony column of The Times.
Colonel Fawcett and his son Jack had embarked on a journey in the summer of 1925 in search of a Lost World, and were never seen again. This was altogether too much of a temptation for a young man with energy and in search for adventure. It is a journey which begins in a reckless spirit of can-do frivolity, but will slowly darken into something very personal and deeply testing, ‘for which Rider Haggard might have written the plot and Conrad designed the scenery’.
What I Says: What a fascinating adventure this was, very much in the style of an adventure I would take on, little planning, relying on the wrong people, going off script big time and winging it every step of the way. As you can tell this isn’t your classic English adventure, Fleming admits at the beginning that we are running out of new places on this planet to be the first person to step there, so after spotting an advert looking for persons to go and explore one of the last unknown areas, the Amazon Rainforest, he applies and gets himself selected.
The book is split into 3 parts, each one more exciting than the last, as the adventure picks up pace so does the writing. We start off with the planning, the start of the journey and then the tedium of delay after delay once Brazil is reached. It is here that you realise what you are about to get into, a traditional British sense of humour finding the humourous side of everything, that overwhelming politeness that Brits of the past had and the villain of the piece. Next up is the journey into the interior, observations of wildlife, usually that has just been shot and much hardship as Fleming and his team show just how much stamina they had. Finally the most exciting part, the race home to catch a boat, whilst trying to stay ahead of the villain mentioned in the first section.
So what was the point of the adventure? To look for a missing explorer and his son, I had to google this explorer as I hadn’t heard of him before, amazingly this is a mystery that is still alive and well today, recent documentaries show that this is a story that people still aren’t ready to let go of yet, it was interesting to see all the attempts to find the missing explorer over the years. I was well over 200 pages in when I had a thought, Peter Fleming…is he related to that James Bond author? Turns out he is Ian Flemings big brother, the world really is small.
The writing is top notch, even when talking about the planning and the lying around being inactive Fleming pulls in the reader by sharing observations blended his sense of fun, he makes the most of any downtime to keep the reader entertained. I really enjoyed the race in part 3, the pace was intense, the stamina great and the delays soooooooo frustrating. Some of the language is a bit awkward, I know it is a case of those were normal opinions in those days, you can tell that Fleming cared for those he met and worked with and I’m sure if he wrote it today the language used would be far different. This was an epic journey up an epic river and made for a fantastic read. Highly recommended.
Thanks to Eland Publishing for sending me this copy, you can get yourself a copy direct from the publisher HERE:
Gnome Appreciation Society 