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The Mysterious Island

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
By: Jules Verne 1828-1905

A story of castaways, similar to Robinson Crusoe and The Swiss Family Robinson, this book details the escape from Civil War-era Richmond, Virginia, of five Northern men who dared to go aloft in a balloon in the midst of a hurricane. Deposited on a lonely island in the Pacific, they make do with Yankee ingenuity where Chance has left them nothing. Only later do they find they have a hidden benefactor: Captain Nemo, of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea, who resides, alone, secretly on the island. In time, the tiny colony becomes so prosperous that it is able to rescue another castaway from an island a hundred miles away. But all their work will come to naught – their island’s volcano is about to awake!

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Reviews
5of 5 stars Reviewer: fresch - 3/20/2008 19:25
Subject: One of my favorite books!
I remember seeing the 1961 movie as an end−of−term film at school. Later on, got the e−book on my Palm, and was very impressed with the detail of survival on Lincoln Island. Now, have listened to the audiobook, certainly one of my favorite books, I think this would be more valuable to a castaway than Robinson Crusoe would!
4of 5 stars Reviewer: FNH - 5/10/2008 21:23
Subject: Free Audio, Review
This is a true "classic". Adventure and survival play a large part in the story. The ship/balloon wrecked survivors start by scratching a survival but slowly start adding to their tools and building a life on the lost island. The story was a little dispointing for me, its well told but the series of happy/unlikely coincidences one on top of another, time after time stretched the possibilities just too far for my taste. I ended up coming out of the story telling experience and saying to myself, "oh not again". It's a long audio book and in places too long. I suspect that if you were to listen to it in an episodic, one chapter a week way, the story would come across better.
5of 5 stars Reviewer: Chapter&Verse - 7/1/2008 5:57
Subject: A Tour de Force!
Well, at least that what it was called on Kevin Kelly's (WIRED magazine) Cool Tools site. After reading about it, I came here and found 111,000 other people had already investigated it. After listening, I vote "Aye!" This was a very enjoyable return to one of my all−time favorite stories. Verne set out to "one−up" the other castaway books: Robinson Crusoe and Swiss Family Robinson. He dumped his cast on a desert island with absolutely nothing to start with. Another reviewer thought the sequence of events was unlikely. Well, once you get past the balloon floating from Virginia to the Pacific (lol!), these guys needed a little luck thrown their way to survive! And face it − if all the events were likely, would you be entertained?? This is a great story from one of the world's master storytellers. And oh! − the reader does a bang−up job! Thumbs up!
5of 5 stars Reviewer: bfilipow - 5/18/2009 12:58
Subject: What a book! What a reader!
Hats off to Mark.

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