Treasure Island: An Audible Original Drama

It is a play - not the book

brilliant, loved it

Having been critical of a couple of Audible productions recently this one is a real tonic. It's a brilliant adaptation of a classic story. With this one it all seems to come together with a perfect balance to the sound, narration and voice acting. The salty seadogs smell of brine, the English gentlemen are suitably quaint and most importantly Captain Flint the Parrot is a complete star. I struggle to imagine how they could have done this one much better!

I mean I'm not really sure what I was expecting but I don't think this was it. Though, to be fair, the only thing I knew about this before reading (listening) is that this is what Treasure Planet was based on. It was interesting to read, for example; I didn't know before that this was where Long John Silver came from and just the whole atmosphere in general was well made.But, I just didn't love it, the only character I actually liked was Jim and even he didn't inspire that many feelings in me, and I think if I hadn't seen Treasure Planet I would have been a lot more confused about what was going on.Also, I thought this book was meant to be more about finding treasure but that didn't really feel very relevant for much of the book to be honest.It wasn't bad, the BBC adaptation was entertaining, I just think it wasn't what I expected.

I was a paying subscriber to Audible for a while and gave up because, I assume, I just made bad choices before but I thoroughly enjoyed this (part of an offer with my Alexa Echo). The excellent cast made all the difference for me - my other books seemed to have just one narrator, maybe two, and I soon tired of their mannerisms, awful mispronunciations, wrong emphasis, etc, whereas the professional actors in Treasure Island (Philip Glennister, Catherine Tate, etc) knew exactly what they were doing to really bring the story to life, helped also by the atmospheric background noises. Yes, as someone else has pointed out, it is done like a play but personally this works for me, unlike the deadly dull Jackanory-style reading-our-loud audiobooks during which my mind wanders off. Will seek out more like this.

I really didn't like the dramatisation of the book and the voices of the characters just didn't fit with my imagination of them. Long John Silver, in particular, doesn't sound anything like the gnarled old sea dog that R L Stevenson describes so well and the voice of his parrot is laughable - I honestly believe that I could do it better and I'm useless at impressions! Very annoying also, is it's deviation from the book. I've no idea why it was thought it necessary to change the plot in places and, for a book I know so well, I found it so irritating that I gave up listening half way through. If you've never read the book before, I suppose you might enjoy this at face value but if, like me, you've loved it since childhood, avoid like the plague...

I read the book and had a pre concieved idea of how the characters would sound and act (as my imagination created them advice read). Sorry this audio didn't match that, so kind of spoilt the story for me. Guess there is no way the creators of the audio can know that.

The voice acting is top notch. The writing is classic but the interpretation by the actors makes it dynamic enough for our current fast paced tastes. I loved it. I hated John Silver and his bird, which is a compliment to the actor because the character was not written to be soft or palatable, but as the toughest and shrewdest of cutthroat pirates.