The Secret Power by Marie Corelli

Marie Corelli was an extremely popular Victorian author of occult and metaphysical romances, and many of her books were reprinted in inexpensive odd-size paperback by flying saucer guru Ray Palmer's Amherst press, of which this is one. This was a VERY hard book to finish because it is so atrociously written. People are constantly delivering impassioned monologues about LOVE. Still I wanted to see where she would go with her protagonists, a male supergenius living in a hermit shack in California who created some sort of superweapon to end war forever, and a female supergenius in a palace in Italy who created a fabulous airship to find the legendary Brazen City in the middle of the Sahara Desert. Not nearly as exciting as it sounds - sometimes I could only read a couple of pages before becoming exhausted at all the dozens of exclamation points. Pretty awful, especially compared with the readability of Steinbeck.