This is one of the most tedious books I have ever read, from the painstaking reproduction of turgid Victorian poetry to the unbelievably bad and predictable Scooby-Doo ending (A-ha! I knew it was the Professor under the mask all along!) Hundreds of pages of writing, and yet the characters remain caricatures throughout (what do they like? do they have interesting opinions about anything? what do they do when they aren't squabbling with each other?) I cannot recall one compelling sentence in the entire book. It's like trying to chew dust.