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The Land of Mist

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The Land of Mist

By: Arthur Conan Doyle
Narrated by: Barnaby Edwards
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The Land of Mist is a novel written by Arthur Conan Doyle in 1926. Although this is a Professor Challenger story, it centres more on his daughter Enid and her colleague. Heavily influenced by Doyle’s growing belief in Spiritualism after the death of his son, brother, and two nephews in World War I, the book focuses on Edward Malone’s at first professional, and later personal interest in Spiritualism. There is a suggestion in chapter two that the deaths of ‘ten million young men’ in World War I was by punishment by the Central Intelligence for humanity’s laughing at the alleged evidence for life after death.

George Edward Challenger, better known as Professor Challenger, is a fictional character in a series of science fiction stories by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Unlike Conan Doyle’s laid-back, analytic character, Sherlock Holmes, Professor Challenger is an aggressive, dominating figure.

Sir Arthur Ignatius Conan Doyle, DL (1859-1930) was a Scottish author. He is most noted for his stories about the detective Sherlock Holmes, which are generally considered a major innovation in the field of crime fiction, and for the adventures of Professor Challenger. He was a prolific writer whose other works include science fiction stories, historical novels, plays and romances, poetry, and non-fiction. His first significant work was A Study in Scarlet, which appeared in Beeton's Christmas Annual for 1887 and featured the first appearance of Sherlock Holmes, who was partially modelled after his former university professor, Joseph Bell. Other works include The Firm of Girdlestone (1890), The Captain of the Polestar (1890), The Doings of Raffles Haw (1892), Beyond the City (1892), The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (1892), The Exploits of Brigadier Gerard (1896), The Great Boer War (1900), The Green Flag (1900), The Hound of the Baskervilles (1902), and The Lost World (1912).

Public Domain (P)2013 Audible Ltd
Classics Detective Mystery Traditional Detectives Fiction
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Editorial reviews

The Land of Mist is one of Arthur Conan Doyle’s sci-fi/fantasy Professor Challenger stories. Doyle allegedly felt confined by his most famous creation, Sherlock Holmes, whom he tried to kill off multiple times. In this story he seems to delight in allowing for the possibility of supernatural forces that Holmes’ analytic nature would never allow. Doyle was, in his own life, interested in spiritualism and this audiobook finds Challenger a tiring widower whose daughter has become interested in the same. British Actor Barnaby Edwards gives an engaging performance, developing distinct characters: a leonine Challenger, a charming Edward Malone, and sweet Enid. Edwards’ reading will draw you into the world of spiritualism with its debunkers and advocates.

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(1926) A new world, the end of the world, and now… the world hereafter. The Professor Challenger series can be seen as a trilogy representing the spiritual journey from life to death to the afterlife. This was probably unintentional or perhaps post hoc, but I wouldn’t put anything past Doyle.

I knew going in that this novel was a thinly disguised spiritualist symposium, that Doyle was by now getting old (67), and moreover that the Professor Challenger connection was a bait-and-switch.

What I didn’t know was how delightful it all is: entertaining, snug, kooky, and full of spooky effects. Whenever detective novel fans review a non-detective novel, you can discount the low ratings. All they like is Sherlock, all they know is the same formula over and over. No wonder Doyle rued being known for his weakest stuff (and I say this as a Sherlock fan myself). And in the case of this novel you also need to factor in the modern disdain for religion. Yes, the spiritualism movement was risible, but the enlightened reviewers here would sneer just as much if this were a Christian novel.

There’s not so much a plot as a paranormal extravaganza. The book is part Ghost (1990), part Ghostbusters, with its psychic researchers and ectoplasm, part The Exorcist, and all propaganda. But it’s propaganda dramatized. There’s a courtroom drama, a night-in-a-haunted-house subplot, evil spirits and evil psychics, a big (surprisingly relevant) debate that ends in riot (similar to how the series began, but this time Professor Challenger is the loser). There’s also a storyline with a Dickensian ruffian which I didn’t care for. Only intermittently does the novelist segue into the educator. Your mileage may vary with this. I didn’t mind it so much because the lessons, usually in dialogue, are breezy, and the whole thing was interesting to me just as an artifact. One notable feature, in this regard, is how Christian the spiritualist movement described is—not what you’d expect today, but it makes perfect sense that that’s how it started. There are prayers and hymns and talk of Christ mixed in with the New Age mumbo jumbo. The seances and such appeared to me like magic shows run by acting troupes (sorry, Conan Doyle). I thought it was funny that the spirits raised are often exotic characters like American Indians or a little black girl from the South—clearly a tell that the participants were reading too many dime novels.

“Come back, if you can, Malone, and let me hear your adventures among the insane.”

Doyle’s personal story here is very compelling to me. It’s sad, yet there’s a nobility to it. And he’s so intelligent, lends all his formidable eloquence to his detractors with such fairness, and anticipates and voices their myriad counterarguments so well, in order to forestall them, that it does almost give me pause. Though Doyle suggests advances in science were distancing Man from the important truths, I get the feeling it was precisely those mind-blowing breakthroughs that led him to believe some new spiritual one possible too. (The irony is that he was treating religion as if it were a subject for scientific examination. Also he evinces the same smug superiority towards the gullible of the Church that he protests against when directed at his “proven” beliefs). One thing is sure: the movement did not give birth to a new religion on a par with Christianity as Doyle hoped, however correct he was about the decline of Christianity in the future.

The wishful thinking behind it all almost breaks your heart. But when one of the spirits says he was a seaman on the HMS Monmouth, and you look up the fate of the ship, sunk off the coast of Chile in the Battle of Coronel, 1914, and you see the casualties—1,660 British dead, 0 German—you begin to suspect why spiritualism was so popular.

Narrator brought it to life

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Even if one excepts the book in the historical framework of the author, it is still a silly book, much like the Poison Belt.

I guess I will come find myself to the singular joy I get from the Sherlock Holmes stories.

Wonderful narration for a silly book

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Not generally my genre but a great read and excellent performance. The story setting and plot was kept me listening to the very end.

A very interesting read from Sir ACD that I had never heard about.

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Having read Doyle many times I was caught off guard by his handle on Spiritualism. His other books focus so much on logic that reading this makes Doyle more well rounded revealing a man both logical and deeply spiritual.

Chilling

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While I can lose myself in the Lost World and Sherlock Holmes, this effort by Doyle was a dull disappointment. While he inserts characters from the Lost World, they just don't work for me. I understand spiritualism was a " thing" back then, but not now.

Lightning didn't strike twice

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I love Sherlock Holmes and have always felt helpless, defensive, and angry at what I have perceived as the duping of such a talented writer and rational thinker as Conan Doyle. Like any of his works. The book is well written and holds the attention well. But it was very clear that he wanted to cram as much “evidence” into the novel as possible. He managed it well enough. But it was clear throughout that this book is spiritualist propaganda. Still, his heart was and ever remains pure. That is what I have always loved about him and why it hurts me so and makes me so angry at the many psychics he believed and endorsed that were later ousted. However, he has a plausible explanation for this, and who knows, when we pass over, we may well learn that they were right and genuine all along and history got the story wrong.

A wonderful glimpse into the spiritual mindset of the author

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The story might not be the most moving, but this book is worth a read simply because it sheds a light on one of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's peculiarities: his obsession with mysticism. This book helps you get into his frame of mind and understand what he was thinking as he rejected materialism and his trademark rationality.
#Magical #VoicesFromTheGrave
#tagsgiving #sweepstakes

Interesting view of Arthur Conan Doyle

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