Helpful Score: 1
This is one of Verne's more obscure novels. And, for good reason! While the title smacks of a South Sea volcanic island, much of it amounts to little more than a lesson in the history and geography of the Eastern Mediterranean. The archipelago turns out to be Greece in the early 1800s; the plot little more than a humdrum tale of the pursuit of a corsair who has plagued the seas. Wearisome as it is, certainly an aficionado will not want to miss this one; all others may pass on it. Oh yes, there is no volcano (although Verne seems to have an obsession with using them in his plots); the fire refers to the incessant was that have scourged the area since ancient times. Written in 1885, it has some of the aspects (although minor) of Fenimore Cooper's The Wing and Wing; or Le Feu-Follet, written forty-two years earlier (1842).
