“It was Silver’s voice, and before I had heard a dozen words, I would not have shown myself for all the world. I lay there, trembling and listening, in the extreme of fear and curiosity, for, in those dozen words, I understood that the lives of all the honest men aboard depended on me alone.”

There are two things you need to know about me: 1) Treasure Planet is one of my favourite movies. 2) Black Sails is one of my favourite TV shows. If you don't know what those are or what their relevance here is, Treasure Planet is an animated Disney adaptation of Treasure Island set in space, and Black Sails is a four season-long prequel of Treasure Island. So I was both predisposed to love and be disappointed by this, and in the end it's a bit of both.

This follows Jim Hawkins as, through a series of extraordinary circumstances, get's wrapped up in a hunt for the famed Captain Flint's buried treasure. Robert Louis Stevenson invented many famous pirate tropes with this one novel, such as X marking the spot of buried treasure and talking parrots perched on the shoulders of one-legged pirates, so no matter my feelings on the book as a story I will be forever indebted to it because it's given me the many pirate movies and TV shows I love.

The writing here is nothing special, being extremely matter-of-fact and impersonal, so the story and characters are really what carry the book. The first half of the story is incredibly fun, with Jim meeting various pirates and hearing tales of their various exploits. But when Jim starts having pirate exploits of his own I begin to lose interest, and lose interest quickly. It didn't take long for me to start constantly comparing it to Treasure Planet and how much better I thought it handled various plot points.

I genuinely don't know how I feel about the characters. I love Jim Hawkins and Long John Silver, but not because of this book. I love Jim Hawkins because he rides around on hoverboards and clings to any male authority figure because he needs a father; I love Long John Silver because of his development from coward to quartermaster to legend. I love them because of the adaptations they've been in that I love. So while I enjoyed them here, they pale in comparison to other versions of them I've seen.

Maybe if I wasn't so attached to Treasure Planet and Black Sails I would have enjoyed this more. Based on my enjoyment of the first half of this, though, I think that whatever added enjoyment I would have had would have been marginal. This book isn't bad, I just thought it was okay. I would recommend watching Treasure Planet or Black Sails instead of reading this, but I wouldn't discourage you from reading it either. I understand its significance in culture and how others could like it even if I mostly didn't.