The Disintegration Machine

Well my journey through Professor Challenger complete with this book, #5 The Disintegration Machine. It has been a steadily down-hill journey from the splendour of The Lost World to the, if I am honest, mediocrity of the last three.

Not helped by the fact some are only a few pages long, which is hardly enough to set up a good premise, the last three lack any real commitment.

The disintegration machine tells us about a Latvian scientist in London (good idea to choose a foreign scientist) who has designed a machine which will dissolve an item (person, army, or warship, for example) and then allow them to be reassembled at a later time. Theodore Nemor the scientist has already sold the secret to the highest bidder - a European country is all we are told - and the professor and Malone (the reporter from all the earlier adventures) are to interview Nemor and have the machine demonstrated to prove the truth of it.

I won't spoil beyond this - it is only a short skip to the end, but for me at lease, it was fairly unrewarding.

2 stars
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Previous in the series
The Lost World (#1)
The Poison Belt (#2)
The Land of Mist (#3)
When the World Screamed (#4)