Hyne takes us back to the primæval Yucatan peninsula, where Deucalion, who has honestly, justly and steadfastly governed over the Yucatan colony, is now recalled to Atlantis. There trouble brews, grim poverty, a falling away from ancient traditions, a usurper-empress, Phorenice, reigning with an iron fist. When she buries alive Naia, Deucalion's betrothed, he flees to the wilderness. Years later, he joins an army of revolt, but when the religious leaders realize that Phorenice is unvanquishable by force, they must destroy the entire continent, leaving Deucalion and Naia as sole survivors.

So why has The Lost Continent: The Story of Atlantis remained so popular? Well mostly because it's -- as one would say in Brit-speak -- a ripping good yarn. A seductive oh-so-nasty empress and a hero who's as straight an arrow as they come, throw in great battles, escapes, sorcery and earth-shattering cataclysms and voilà! Admittedly the novel does reflect to some extent the societal stratification of 1900 Britain, but Gary Hoppenstand puts all of this in perspective in his excellent afterword, which also gives some good insights into Hyne himself. Still, after a century or so, The Lost Continent remains an eminently readable and entertaining novel, nothing too profound, just a good lost race novel done the way it should be. If I had one criticism, it is that none of the original illustrations, either from Pearson's Magazine, or the first book edition are given. In that sense, it is much more pleasant to immerse oneself completely in the feel of the era by reading the novel as it first appeared in Pearson's Magazine and is reproduced in Science Fiction by the Rivals of H.G. Wells (see above). If authors like H. Rider Haggard, Frank Aubrey and Thomas Janvier mean something to you, this is a nice new edition of a classic lost race title which will fit in very well with the above. If you're a dedicated avant-garde cyber-punk fanatic, well... read it anyways, you might even learn that fantasy literature did indeed exist before the digital age... now how mind-expanding would that be?