Treasure Island

What to say about one of the most famous books of all time?

Most people know something of the story's synopsis: a teenage boy meets an ex-pirate and inherits a treasure map. He enlists the help of an educated doctor friend, who in turn enlists a squire, who puts together a crew. The squire is naive and inexperienced so relies on on the advice of a very helpful ship's cook, Long John Silver, to select the crew. They mutiny, many die, the treasure is lost, and lots of adventuring happens in between.

The story is a wild, swashbuckling tale. It features real names of pirates that once sailed the seas (such as Izzy Hands). It uses archaic tropes, such as how the distrustful pirates all have some disability or disfigurement that betray their darkness. It is a colonial tale, told by a wealthy white English boy who looks down on, and outsmarts, the lower educated pirate mutineers. It is a book of men (and a boy) with almost no women mentioned since the boy's mother leaves the story a short way in. It is violent, but generally those who suffer are the pirates, who garner little sympathy from the narrator. And even with these glaring issues, it is a great romp, a properly fun tale that justifies its enduring legacy as a popular favourite. It's also brilliantly written, richly described, with great characters. Worth a read with open eyes, for the characters and the setting alone.

“Wait… what’s your real name?”
After a moment, One’s face broke into a huge, beautiful grin, and I knew that was it. I was utterly smitten. Totally, one hundred percent gone for this strange, winged monster with creepy black eyes and ghostly, green-tinged skin.
“Aury,” he said.

Not going to lie. I didn't expect a space opera series to end up focusing so much on horses. I'm not complaining. I like horses.

After trying to open up a new trade route, Reese and the crew fall into the hands of slavers again. Hirianthial, the Eldritch crew member fights back. He realizes that his psychic powers are getting more powerful. In fact, the only person he's ever heard of with these powers went insane and killed a lot of people on the Eldritch planet.

The Eldritch have kept the planet closed off forever. Bringing a crew of non-Eldritch in is going to be a problem.

The slow romance between Reese and Hirianthial continues. I enjoyed the idea of Reese trying to build a relationship based on what she read in romance books. She gets a bit annoyed when he doesn't act like the heroes she reads about.

This is a very different book than the first one. There are a lot more politics than space travel. I love the diverse crew, especially Alacazam. He's an alien that looks like a fuzzy basketball. He communicates through thoughts and helps cheer everyone else.

Warning - there is an attempted rape scene This review was originally posted on Based On A True Story

This is another one of those books that I never finished in my youth. I don't think I would've ever fully appreciated it back then, because the language IS rather... foreign.

Having read it now, as an adult, it's not a bad story. The ending is definitely not what I had been led to believe from everything I'd heard about it. Jim Hawkins, the doctor, Benn Gunn and Long John Silver are all memorable characters. They're well fleshed out and consistently portrayed.

The story itself has it's moments. I will confess to reading four or five pages, and at times stopping to wonder what had just happened. Some chapters I didn't have a clue what was going on, and because of it I missed important pieces of information which only served to confuse me further down the road. Other times, though, I was riveted, and that's what finally decided the three-star rating!

I've never REALLY been a fan of pirate stories, but I think that this is definitely one of those classics that everyone should read at least once in their lives. If you enjoy pirates, though, you'll probably rate this one much higher than I did!