I read this for the Book Riot Read Harder 2018 challenge, Task 3: a classic of genre fiction. And I can clearly understand why it's a classic - it's a likable read whose stand-out quality is its sense of wonder, its immense appreciation of the marine world and all the creatures that live in it. All the natural descriptions are fantastic - vivid and colourful. A lot of them are also inaccurate (in particular the open ocean description of the South Pole) but Verne can in no way be blamed for that, he was writing with the best information he had at the time.

All I knew about this book before reading was that there was a character called Captain Nemo who had a submarine called Nautilus. I rather had the impression that he was the protagonist. He's certainly far and away the most interesting character here, but his actual page time is really quite limited. Which is a bit of a shame, because as wonderful as those natural descriptions are, I'd have liked a bit less of Professor Aronnax going on and on about them and a bit more of the looming and compelling Nemo.