This is a tedious and excessively verbose book with some genuinely good writing and interesting construction beneath all of it, but it is challenging to get past its downsides. As you might expect from a classic from this time period, the racism and Christian-centric thought is prevalent and pretty exhausting. It is interesting and informative to a certain degree if you want to learn a lot about whales, whaling, and a more archaic perception of cetaceans as a whole, but the plot momentum is pretty non-existent and you will be forced to read dozens of inane metaphors about things you don't care about and paltry attempts at Shakespearean dramatics whether you like it or not. I'm glad I read it but I'll be glad to never read it again.