Tuesday, May 5, 2020

Book Review: Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson


Buy Treasure Island Book Online at Low Prices in India | Treasure ...

Treasure Island, probably the most classic pirate story ever told, with its countless adaptations, my favorite of which is Disney’s Treasure Planet, the movie that prompted me to get the book and read it. So let’s dive in, shall we?


Young Jim Hawkings is given the opportunity to go on a seafaring mission to the legendary “Treasure Island”, to which he possesses a map. Along for the ride (uh, voyage) are some trustworthy personnel, some less trusty. Amongst the latter is none other than dreaded one-legged pirate captain Long John Silver himself.

As far as an adventure book goes, I suppose this one is pretty good. It really hooked me in the first part, but I gradually lost interest in reading it in the last third or so. The writing style was a bit hard to get through (and dated, obviously). It has a lot of action, which is good, I suppose. But sometimes a little bit more breathing room would be nice, too.

The characters were not my cup of tea, either. Long John Silver is probably the one I enjoyed the most out of all of these, with his side-switching and all, but the others I didn’t find particularly interesting or noteworthy, including our protagonist, which is a bit of a downer.

So overall, this wasn’t really my cup of tea, but I definitely think there’s people out there that can enjoy it more than me. If you want to explore the inspiration behind countless other forms of pirate media and stories, I’d say give it a read. If you don’t end up liking this version of the story, there’s always countless adaptations that do things differently that may satisfy your needs.

Rating: 3/5


No comments:

Post a Comment