Treasure Island is one of those classic books that I have always meant to read but never got round to.  I know all about Long John Silver and Jim Hawkins and the treasure, but it is certainly an unusual experience to read a sequel written 120 years after an unread original.

And sequels by someone else can be a problem too – rarely as good, usually a pale copy.  Rewriting someone else’s work is fraught with peril.  So, Jim Hawkins and the Curse of Treasure Island would seem to have everything against it.

Well, like young Jim, this story overcomes all these threats and setbacks to achieve its noble aim.  It is a rollicking good adventure that twists and turns and does not sort itself out until the very end.  There are murders and secrets, pirates and treasure aplenty as Jim Hawkins is called on, ten years after his first adventure, so solve a question carried over from that time.

Dread it as he does, he has to return to Treasure Island to resolve a life or death issue, taking with him some of the old characters and drawing some new ones into a tangled web of greed and deceit.

Francis Bryan has tried carefully to echo Robert Louis Stevenson’s style.  As in the original, Jim tells the story directly, and the language is that touch more dignified and involved than modern writers tend to use.  This certainly works to create the atmosphere of an old classic.  The story line, on the other hand, could perhaps have benefited from some of the same careful crafting – there are a few sudden leaps of circumstance and inconsistent details that jar a little.

But the sheer energy of the story carries it over these few sour notes.  Jim is a believable character, as uncertain at first as we are of what is happening around him.  But he grows in confidence and realises that he can and must take control, and details start falling into place. 

Jim Hawkins and the Curse of Treasure Island has certainly convinced me to hunt up that copy of the original Treasure Island I know is round somewhere.  It is that rare treasure, the good sequel!

Review by David Beagley

© 2003 David Beagley