Another classic by Wells. But like The Invisible man, which I read last year, I suspect it's a classic because of the idea behind the book rather than the story itself, which is rather thin.
In fact I think I've spotted a trend in the Wells books I've read - his heroes are mostly observers, taking minimal part in events. This seems to work well in The War of the Worlds, but in this book it's less effective and the protagonist rather less sympathetic.
Most of what happens in the book would have happened whether the narrator was there or not - he's merely a convenient mechanism to bring the story to the reader and plays no real part in it. This seems to have been a common enough narrative device at the time when Wells was writing, but I found it annoying in this book.
