mpclemens 's review for:

The Mysterious Island by Jules Verne
2.0
As a boy, I would have cited this book as one of my favorites. As an adult, I found it a struggle to enjoy again. Set in the same universe as [b:Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea|33507|Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea (Extraordinary Voyages, #6)|Jules Verne|https://d202m5krfqbpi5.cloudfront.net/books/1345271681s/33507.jpg|1112418], Verne's protagonists struggle against... nearly nothing. The titular island provides all, and lack nothing, and no actual peril threatens the characters for nearly four fifths of the book. It's a love letter to the field of engineering, and the period attritudes of using man's intellect to dominate nature. The glow of wonder dulls rapidly, though, as chapter after chapter unfolds and the castaways -- are faced with only slight inconveniences and hardships, quickly overcome. Disease, illness, injury: they have no place on this Island, and the truly insurmountable problems are swiftly dealt with thanks to an ongoing deux et machina that resolves every issue handily, and yet does not stand up to any rigorous thinking.

Only in the last fifth of the book does Verne seem to realize that he's writing an actual adventure tale, and he turns up the heat -- quite literally -- on his characters. Then, suddenly, there is peril, suspense, and to some degree actual mystery. That is the book I fell in love with as a child, and if the odds against the characters were stacked greater than mild drawing-room danger that overtakes nearly the whole of the novel. This is, sadly, a book that cannot be enjoyed with anything resembling a critical eye. Hand it to a child and they may enjoy it. But don't expect a return to the island to be anywhere as satisfying.

SpoilerI remembered enough of this book to recall that Verne's own Captain Nemo returns in a cameo role here, albeit aged and weakened when he is finally revealed to the colonists and thus, the reader. The real mystery of the island is how men as supposedly educated and clever as this band could be so easily and repeatedly deceived, outfoxed, and out-thunk by what appears to be an old and relatively infirm Nemo. He is weak when we meet him at the end of the book, and yet the miracles he appears to perform in secret would be the work of a younger, and more vigorous man. I can look past the extreme convenience of an island so packed with flora and fauna that the characters literally pick up what they need from the ground, but to inject Nemo as the real mystery of the island is, to me, pure lazy writing. It's as if Verne decided to try his hand at a castaway novel, and then, when the going gets tough, throws his pen into the air and declares "How is it done? Nemo!" A serious disappointment.