"The Lord of the Sea (1901), almost as fine [as The Purple Cloud], is strongly based on Le Comte de Monte-Cristo by Alexandre Dumas. It develops a network of mid-19th-century motifs -- incredible coincidences, swapped babies, hidden identities, chance-found incredible wealth, documents in a trunk, festering revenges, elaborate prison escapes, frustrated romance, Napoleonic megalomania -- yet, though written to an aesthetic outdated for its time, in embodies that aesthetic with enormous elan and vitality." -- The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction