About.com Rating



Simon & Schuster, May 2009

Flint and Silver is the first in a series of prequels John Drake is planning to the much loved children's book Treasure Island. This rollicking tale of pirates and buried treasure is not a children's book, however. Drake has penned a wonderful beginning to the story that is finished in Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island, but with an eye on the adult reader who perhaps still longs for adventure on the high seas - complete with all the realistic gore and atrocity that goes along with actual piracy.

Drake has also decided to include women, who were completely absent in Stevenson's novel, and to accurately portray the commotion they would have caused aboard pirate ships long at sea.

John Drake is admittedly planning to write more than one prequel to Stevenson's Treasure Island, and although Flint and Silver is an action-packed swashbuckling page-turner from start to finish, it really does just barely manage to set the stage for the longer saga. Most of the questions raised by Treasure Island are addressed in Flint and Silver, including the complicated relationship between Long John Silver and the infamous Captain Flint, from whom the novel derives its name. We also meet many more familiar characters from the original, including Blind Pew, Billy Bones and Long John's parrot - also named Captain Flint.

The plot hinges on the developing relationship between Flint and Silver as they plunder their way through the Caribbean together as gentlemen of fortune. Long John insists that all men under their command live by a code of conduct, known as the "Articles," attempting to bring some small modicum of decency and democracy to an otherwise brutish existence.

As the story progresses we witness the increasing conflict between the sadistic and homicidal Flint and the relatively decent and honorable Silver, a natural born leader who would always rather spare than murder the crews of the ships they take as prizes.

Once a beautiful woman comes aboard, and between them, the die is cast; it is only a matter of time before the marriage of convenience between Flint and Silver winds up in a bloody divorce.

One of the most interesting and surprising points that the author deals with is the concept of buried pirate treasure, an idea so ingrained in our cultural mythos that to question its existence seems ludicrous. It turns out that the reality is that pirates did not bury their treasure; first of all they rarely lived long enough to even think about retirement, and second they tended to spend whatever they stole. Contrary to Long John Silver's notion that they were "gentlemen" of fortune, eighteenth century pirates tended to live fast, die hard and leave brutalized and/or hanged corpses, not large estates. So buried pirate treasure posed a problem to Drake - why would pirates ever bury their treasure? This reader recommends that you pick up a copy of this wonderful and engrossing first effort and find out.