Bjorn Larsson's Long John Silver is compelling and attractive, a treacherous and anti-authoritarian figure, driven by pride and a sense of fairness. He tells of his life as a smuggler and of working the Caribbean slave ships; of his years as quartermaster to the rum-soaked brute Captain Flint; and, finally, of his meeting with Daniel Defoe, with whom he watches the hanging of pirates at London's Execution Dock.

But this is no mere sequel to Treasure Island. Larsson takes Robert Louis Stevenson's story as his basis and reinvents it, bringing the most complex and powerful character to the fore. Long John Silver is not only a beautifully textured evocation of eighteenth-century seafaring life but also a witty, absorbing, and allusive comment on the making of a myth.