Ghost of Chance

The adventure novel is a genre of novels that has adventure, an exciting undertaking involving risk and physical danger, as its main storyline.... Critic Don D'Ammassa, in the Introduction to the Encyclopedia of Adventure Fiction defines the genre by stating that "an adventure is an event or series of events that happens outside the course of the protagonist's ordinary life, usually accompanied by danger, often by physical action. Adventure stories almost always move quickly, and the pace of the plot is at least as important as characterization, setting and other elements of a creative work." D'Ammassa argues that adventure novels make the element of danger the focus of their story; hence he argues that Charles Dickens' novel A Tale of Two Cities is an adventure novel because the protagonists are in constant danger of being imprisoned or killed, whereas Dickens' Great Expectations is not because "Pip's encounter with the convict is an adventure, but that scene is only a device to advance the main plot, which is not truly an adventure." Adventure has been a common theme since the earliest days of written fiction.
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