When the World Shook

Imagine three friends from England crash on a secret island during a big war. A huge earthquake shakes the world and wakes up super-old kings and princesses who slept for thousands of years in magic coffins! They have flying ships and scary powers, and the bad king wants to destroy everyone, but the nice princess helps the friends stop him and save the day. It's like a wild adventure with ancient secrets and giant shakes! (312 characters)

In H. Rider Haggard's 1919 novel 'When the World Shook,' three shipwrecked Englishmen—narrator Richard Arbuthnot, skeptical doctor Marmaduke Bickley, and devout missionary Humphrey Bastin—find themselves on a remote volcanic island in the South Pacific amid World War I. An unprecedented global earthquake disrupts their isolation, unveiling a subterranean realm inhabited by the Orofenans, descendants of an ancient, advanced civilization. Awakening from millennial slumber in massive coffins, the immortal ruler Oro and his ethereal daughter Yva emerge, possessing technologies far surpassing modern science, including airships and seismic weapons, and harboring ambitions to reshape humanity. As the trio navigates alliances and betrayals, they confront Oro's megalomaniacal plan to eradicate inferior races and impose a new world order using his destructive powers. Yva, torn between filial duty and burgeoning affection for Arbuthnot, aids the humans in thwarting catastrophe. The narrative culminates in cataclysmic confrontations blending scientific marvels with mystical forces, exploring the perils of unchecked immortality and technological hubris against a backdrop of imperial anxieties and apocalyptic upheaval. (512 characters)