A Mysterious Island Cursed By The "Deus ex Machina"

This book review was lovely, but lacked a byline

The Mysterious Island is one of Jules Verne's less-known classics. Jules Verne is known for stories such as Around the World in Eighty Days, Journey to the Center of the Earth, and 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The Mysterious Island serves as a sort of unofficial sequel to 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea; it ties the remaining loose ends that 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea left open. It follows the antics of five characters that were thrown on some random island in the Pacific Ocean while trying to escape from a besieged Richmond, Virginia during the American Civil War: Cyrus Harding, an engineer and a distinguished officer in the Union Army; Gideon Spillit, a frontline reporter for the New York Herald who never backed down if a good report was at stake; Neb, Cyrus's African American servant by Neb's own choice;  Pencroft, a sailor; his adopted son Herbert, fifteen years old; and Cyrus's dog Top.

The book shares the scientific intelligence trend like in 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. The writing is challenging, but not too annoying to read. The plot develops very rapidly, going from "hey we got thrown on some island" to pirate-slaying. My main problem with the story is how much the deus ex machina trope is used. Far too many major challenges in the story are solved by sheer coincidence rather than, say, the characters actually doing something to solve it. The story is a bit of a long read, clocking in at 290 pages with a small font and 12 inch pages. I would recommend this story for people who are in for the longer read and really want to put interest into the book. If you don't care for long books, then this story is not for you.

Jules Verne does an amazing job at staying relatively untouched from major criticism by using scholarly levels of detail for seemingly no reason, despite the fact that the writing of his novels tend to have see-through plot twists and the pacing tends to be inconsistent. The Mysterious Island was an okay read, but definitely not his best material, so don't let this novel make you think the rest of his stories are as mediocre.