You know, looking back on this, the science is tragic. It really is, but you can't blame Verne for it as he was doing the best he had with the state of knowledge at the time. The conclusions he came to were all wrong. but that doesn't take away from the fact that he found the sense-of-wonder button that best characterises science fiction, and he jumped up and down on it hard. The adventures of the Professor and his nephew, off to Iceland and travelling down through a fissure in the bottom of an extinct volcano, are certainly entertaining. And the imagery that results - the underground sea, the forest of mushrooms, the pillars and chambers and rock formations and fossils... it's honestly quite special. I was gearing up to give it four stars, and then came the end, and I will look the other way on ridiculous science under the circumstances, but there comes a point where ridiculous becomes blind bloody stupid and being exploded out of a Mediterranean volcano goes well past that point. A great book let down by what is just a very dumb ending.