Not nearly as polished or nearly as good characters as The Pony Rider book I read recently. Interesting from the aspect of early sci-fi/juvenile/young adult works, but not very satisfying. ( )

The Tom Swift stories were favorites of my dad when he was a kid and everything from Project Gutenberg is free, so I popped one onto my Kindle. I actually had a ball reading it, though perhaps not in the way that the author intended. It was all just so, "Gosh, Dad, let's go down into the basement and put together a submarine in a couple of weeks." It was fun to watch all the hand-waving at how things worked. Need a submarine that can descend to three miles underwater? No problem, just use a triple steel hull with "layers of secret material between them that can withstand enormous pressure." Want to figure out how to navigate underwater in those days when sonar was cumbersome? Just put in glass windows that are "really strong" (able to withstand over 7050 pounds per square inch, if I remember my calculations from scuba class correctly).

It managed to cross that line separating really bad from amusing. Since it only took an hour to read, I can actually envision picking up another one someday just for fun. ;-) ( )

No. 5 ( )