Joe's Myths

Despite all the madness that has been his life, Sinbad once again was set upon by a sense of unease in his quiet lifestyle. He could not content himself with the quiet retired life he deserved and once again longed for the adventures of his previous voyages. Taking the initiative, he acquired some goods to sell, a ship to carry him, and some merchants to accompany him on the voyage. The voyage started as normal as any other, smooth seas and favorable winds. Then the sky darkened with clouds, the water became tumultuous, and the wind picked up and changed directions rapidly. Soon, his ship succumbed to the storm and he resigned himself to his watery grave. When Sinbad regained consciousness, with a slight disappointment filling his soul, he found that he had once again survived against all odds and was once again alone with nothing but driftwood as company. He slowly drifted through the ocean until he landed on a beach. He soon had found fruit and fresh water to restore his spirit a...

The second part of the reading starts with Sinbad's fifth voyage. This one involved his fellow merchants eating a young roc, which angered the parent rocs, which proceeded to destroy their boat. So once again, our hero is stranded on an unknown island. This time, the first person he meets turns out to be a goblin who essentially enslaves Sinbad. Sinbad eventually manages to get the goblin drunk and kill him by slamming him into the ground. Following this murder, Sinbad meets up with some other merchants who eventually convince him to hurl rocks at monkeys in order to steal coconuts from them, which he then sells to make his way back home. On his way he manages to make another small fortune in pearls. The sixth voyage found Sinbad shipwrecked on a notoriously deadly beach, but I'm not sure how it can be so well known if no one ever returns from it. He finds more treasures, and honestly has got to be devaluing gold and precious stones with the sheer number he himself has held at ...

I like the first person story telling, but that may only be because it is a welcomed break from reading all those fables where the only characters were animals. The twist of the island being a whale was great, and I like the way the story managed to put the main character into a difficult position naturally. I'm glad the captain was reluctant to believe that Sinbad had survived. It's almost rare to see characters acting as they should, rather than how the reader would with the excess facts at their disposal. I enjoy the how he uses some of the same tactics over again, tying himself to something so that he may be carried to a new location continue to survive on his journey. It's also amusing how he keeps managing to find his way back to the same set of merchants who lost him in the first place. The captain is always very nice when he rejoins the group, almost too nice. It gets a little tedious for Sinbad to continue surviving his adventure and lose nothing for it. There is n...