King Leopard's gift, and other legends of the animal world Book

Great concept of a man in search of a secret island and a group of people ending up marooned on it. I had to "speedread" a lot as the pace was too slow for me.

This book is not about adventure and adversity in alien surroundings. It is about the psychology of individuals in a closed society.

A few things bothered me:

The writing style is unusual - long passages of dialogue without any indication of who is speaking, or any action or desription. Only words coming out of people's mouths. These passages alternate with chunks of narrative prose where we are told what is happening and what people are thinking. I prefer a mix of dialogue and prose.

There are quite a few characters, and some of them I never got to know well enough to care about them.

The hero, who is described as a bit of a stud, bedding lots of women but never getting emotionally involved, finally finds a woman with whom he wants to spend the rest of his life. This is covered in a couple of short, trivial bits of dialogue between them, and then he tells her that he loves her. In my view, such a fundamental change in a person's outlook on life would have needed a greater focus.

When they get shipwrecked on the island, there is no talk about wanting to leave. Everyone behaves as if they want to settle on the island - almost as if it had been their purpose all along. It is only when people start getting ill that they make plans to build a boat and get away.

Their main preoccupation as they settle on the island is about sexual paring. Who should be with whom, and what problems will ensue if the number of men and women is not equal. And there is an assumption that everyone is eager to have sex. I would have thought that, particularly in the early days, if people expected to return home, they might not have rushed into relationships, or that some relationships could have been about frienship and comfort instead of mating.

Nothing is said about people thinking of the world they left behind. No one misses friends and family, no one hankers after modern conforts or foods or books and films. It seems as if everyone promptly forgets there is a world outside their island.

The failure to cover some things, and too much attention on other things, together with the lack of pace, kept me from really enjoying this book.