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Jules Vernes, Mysterious Island

How can anyone dislike Jules Vernes? My second-favorite French-man (Nerio claims the #1 spot) delivers another incredible tale with relatable intelligent characters, beautiful language, and an ever-imaginative and compelling plot. It’s Swiss Family Robinson on steroids!

by Jules Vernes

5 Stars

Recommended

It seems that modern writing thrives solely on conflict, and often even when there is a common goal for a group that the real story is made to revolve around their differences and social struggles with each other. Mysterious Island is the exact opposite: a story of team-building and interdependence of people of drastically different skills and backgrounds. More than that, it’s also a story of adapting, improvising, and overcoming what many would perceive to be a monumental task: the mutual survival of almost total strangers under adverse conditions.

Set in the States, circa Civil War era, a group of political prisoners makes a daring escape via balloon only to end up blown extraordinarily off course into unexplored reaches of the Southern Pacific. Surviving the storm that beget their awful deliverance, they must then contend with survival on a large island with little chance of rescue. The true Survivor/LOST experience, these men (and boy) must overcome their lack of carried resources to eak out an existance.

This is where Jules Vernes’ Mysterious Island excels: these forelorn adventurers carve out an existance that is anything but meager. With engineering, ballistics and chemistry skills, they totally dominate the island, creating a foundry, furnishing their own tools, gunpowder, clothing, etc… to truly create a new Little America. Although the French seem to have a current disdain for americans at the mo’, you could tell that Vernes was smitten by that indomitable frontier spirit americans exhibited in his era and heroically portrayed these new-world explorers.

I’ve neglected to mention the “Mysterious” portion of the titles, and mysterious this island is. It appears, at times, to provide for them exactly that which they need, and at times a certain presence is felt, or manifested through acts which work in the favor of our adventuresome cadre. In fact, there appears to be a very definitive intelligence at work on their behalf, protecting them, sustaining them. As the mystery is revealed, so is a very unexpected tie-in to another of Jules Vernes’ most fabled characters from another of his mighty and enduring works.

Mysterious Island captures the quintessential spirit of humanity to survive, and to thrive, and encapsulates many of the noblest traits of our race in an endearing group with whom the reader becomes intimately accustomed. A catastrophic, but happy ending punctuate an incredible tale of more than overcoming one’s environment in a new frontier.