Customer Reviews

The Mysterious Island

5 star:		(51)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a fantastic book with enough adventure to keep you reading all night long! Jules has out done himself with this marvelous novel. It has great description and explanations for every flip of the page. I would recomend this book to anyone who is looking for a book filled with rich adventure and loving characters. Overall, this book deserves the 5 stars I gave it(maybe even 6!) and anyone who doesn't agree with me is out of their minds! AWESOME BOOK

had this book in Czech originally. have been looking for it for a while. since I read and re-read it in Czech, wasn't sure if the English version would entertain me as much, ordered it more for other family members... alas, Jules Verne in any language is the master!

I've read several of Verne's novels and this is my favorite. You have to keep in mind that it was written in the late 1800s and some of the attitudes common then don't reflect modern values. Still, the basic story of survival on a remote island, the ingenuity of the castaways in creating a civilized settlement, various dangers, and a great mystery all make this a great book. I discovered a big old hardbound copy in the public library when I was a kid in the 60's and re-read it about 15 years later. It held up. Just try to chuckle at the antique racial and class stereotypes among the castaways, rather than let it affect your enjoyment of the story.

This is a simple adventure for children just-past rudimentary understanding of reading. The text is clear and concise with the characters clearly identified by motivation and direct exposition.

The course of the plot carries no strong violence other than a few drowned pirates, which happens in an indirect and non-shocking manner. No urgent terror befalls the characters and the plot meanders along at a regular pace to an intriguing ending.

Readers of this book will likely want to read 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea.

Led by Yankee military engineer and super control freak Cyrus Smith, an oddly assorted fivesome of castaways recreates civilization on an uninhabited isle, a la Swiss Family Robinson.

"So what?", you're asking. "Hasn't that been done a thousand times? Why should I read another variation on Robinson Crusoe?"

But wait a second: whenever these men are in jeopardy of perishing, somebody or something mysterious comes to their aid and disappears into the shadows without a trace!

At first in denial about what's going on here, eventually Smith has to face the fact that his resourceful miracles pale into insignificance next to those of the mysterious benefactor.

Like any other stereotypical engineer, Smith finds this sort of thing hard to take. (You would too, I'll bet, and you're not even an engineer!)

Some of Smith's buddies have a more romantic nature and are perfectly capable of supposing that a genius, or a supernatural force, is protecting them (Who WAS that masked man? I wanted to thank him, etc.) and accept it with a patient shrug. Not to spoil the ending for the few who are lucky enough not to already know it, but their final helplessness in the hands of nature disproves once & for all Verne's popular image as a celebrator of the wonders of technology and human triumph over creation.

Yes, the descriptions of the impossible ecology of the island are tedious, and so are the detailed accounts of Smith's achievements (e.g. manufacturing nitroglicerin and a telegraph). But it aint true that the characters are flat - they're just a bit too subtly drawn for some readers. And yes, for the modern audience the characters tend to be overshadowed by the details about the island, the science, etc., but it will be less tedious if we try to read the story as the original audience did. You see, it was originally serialized in a magazine, and was full of cliffhangers from one episode to the next.

Incidentally, I was greatly amused by the reviewers here who reacted so strongly against reviewer Gordon - "What a moron, he thought Verne adapted his novel from the 1961 screenplay", etc., when in all probability Gordon was putting us on.

This novel has suffered in the English-speaking world from the lousy translations available up until a few years ago. That's true of most of Verne's work, actually, but it's especially true of this here novel. The recent rendings by S. Kravitz and J. Stump are the only English versions worth more than the paper they're written on.

Try it. You'll like it.

I'm at a loss to explain why I found this book so compelling. At 700-odd pages with flat characters, no dramatic conflict to speak of, no giant crabs or chickens (if you remember the movie), little action until the end, no humor, no sex, not even any mystery--since it's almost impossible to avoid spoilers--but plenty of tedious description, stiff dialogue and quaintly oversimplified scientific exposition, you'd think it'd be impossible to get through. Yet I stopped everything I was doing and breezed through it in only a few days. I guess it's a testimony to the power of a well-wrought adventure story, and this is one of the best of its kind. For some reason I highly recommend it.

This is a fine Victorian era fantasy novel by Jules Verne. Five Civil War era Americans get stranded on a mysterious island. They manage to survive, and even thrive, thanks to their ingenuity (and from some other means that I won't reveal because that would give away the secret behind the mystery). That's all I am going to say about this book, read it yourself and discover what happens. Recommended to fans of 19th Century fiction.

It is unfortunate that an opinions of such "reviewers" as Gordon Ehrensing might actually be published on Amazon.com. These clueless "breed of men" educate themselves by reading (if ever!) Readers Digest's adapted-for-4th-graders versions of classics, by watching Disney's 1993 interpretation of Three Musketeers (the book is probably too thick for them), and comics. They learn history from "Xena, the Warrior princess" and "Gladiator".
"The story.. was written in 1961 by John Prebble.. as a screenplay", he writes in his "review". Oh, man, go back to the school you drop out from and learn that Verne was born in 1828 and died in 1905 (60 years before the movie you keep refering to was created), that Alexander Dumas (the author of The Count of Monte Cristo and Three Musketeers and not a screenplay writer!) was born in 1824 and died in 1895, that Arthur Conan Doyle was born in 1859 and his Sherlock Homes doesn't have anything to do with a character in "Shangai Nights" movie.

One advice for people like you: less watch TV and read more. Educate yourself and you won't be looking as stupid as you are now.

As for the book, inspite of Gordon Ehrensing's opinion, it will remain to be a classic adventure book for kids of all ages, along with "20 leagues under the see" and "In 80 days around the world". Time proven.

I found this book so enthralling that every time I read it I have to read it in one sitting.

A couple of reviews below some idot gave this great book a bad review because he thought it copied from a silly 60's movie of the same title and premise. Newsflash: this book was written in 1886, more or less when the story takes place; and, in actuality, that 1961 film was based on his book. This gordon carachter seems to be under the impression that Jules Verne is a contemporary author. I can assure him that Jules Verne died long before that movie was even made.

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne is a story of the escape of five prisoners in a hot air balloon. The prisoners are all Union men being held by the Confederacy in Richmond. After they escape in the balloon, they get caught in a great storm and are wrecked on an unknown island in the Pacific Ocean. They start with absolutely nothing, but they manage to build a comfortable life with their knowledge. The members include an engineer, his servant, a journalist, a sailor, and a boy. The engineer is the main hero. It is his knowledge which helps the party to build their perfect little world. Without him, the party would probably perish. The sailor serves as comic relief. He is always making funny remarks. Basically they enjoy their life on the island, but they face some crises, and receive help from a mysterious source. As the book progresses, the mysterious coincidences build up.

This is a good book for survival fans. It's interesting to see how they are able to build their mini civilization from nothing. If you're not interested in island survival though, you may get bored with the details on how to make a pottery kiln, or building a blacksmith's forge, or the search for edible plants. One point I didn't like very much was the character of the servant. As an African-american, he's a little too subservient--a kind of Uncle Tom type who lives to serve his master. That's really out-of-date now, which is why this is not one of Vernes better works. If you haven't read any of Verne's works, I recommend 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and Journey to the Moon instead. If you've read a lot of Verne, this is a solid book, but not his best.