Enjoyment (6/10):
In typical Jules Verne fashion an epic journey is undertaken, though this book is actually part two of a series (part one being From the Earth to the Moon) so the journey has already started. The pacing of the book and the events that unfold actually keep you decently hooked for a surprisingly simple concept of merely traveling around the moon. One thing that I personally loved reading this is that we the readers already know about the moon and the secrets they are interested in investigating, so we can compare the true results to the predicted results of the novel, and I was quite impressed at some of the things predicted by the novel.
Learning (3/10):
There are some learning opportunities about some concepts of space and the moon such as no sound in space, gravitational pulls of planets, etc. but nothing major, as expected of course.
Broadening (5/10):
One thing that really interested me about this was how many predictions about the moon and space travel were correct from knowledge based in 1870. Even such predictions that the moon and earth were formed both from gases in space (slightly wrong.. but still) and how the lack of atmosphere on the Moon would not allow for moon-aliens to exist. Additionally simple things like there would be no sound from explosions in space because no medium would be present to translate it. The final piece of this book that I really surprised me was how the return and recovery of the astronauts was almost exactly similar to that of the Apollo program (1870 science fiction vs 1960’s real life).
Closing Remarks:
Overall the books was probably not the most exciting Jules Verne novel but can still be regarded as fun epic adventure with scientific backing. As mentioned previously the most amazing part of this book for me was to compare predictions about the moon and space travel and the knowledge we have today.