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Opinion
I will admit this right now; I’ve never read this novel before this review. Why? Well, for one thing, this particular fantasy wasn’t part of the culture of what to read when I was a kid. Where I grew up, we were exposed to different stories but, I almost wish I had been given such an opportunity. This book got my attention right away.
My first impressions of this story are that it starts so well. Right at the beginning of the story, we have the briefest of a basic sailing story, and it goes into a fantasy. This was written in a time when there were so many crazy things going on with the world. This was back when Japan only let the Dutch come to their shores. That’s a very long time ago. With what Swift does in this story, I honestly feel this was one of the very first versions of “modern fantasy” before that genre even was considered real.
Let’s go into a couple of critiques here, and my first one goes into my “Story structure, Foundation, and Presentation” portion of my scoring. I’m not sure why people do this for e-reader copies, but there was no such thing as a space between paragraphs, or proper paragraphs. There are whole pages that go on and on without any indentation or even a space between things. This is very rough on the eyes.
Next, let’s look at the overuse of comma. I think this was an issue that happened at the time with most scripts. I don’t think anyone at that time ever said a word about the run-on sentence. This book is run-on-tastic. There are way too many commas used in the majority of the sentences, and not nearly enough semi-colons or periods.
Now, let’s go into my favorite part of the review, and that’s what I really enjoyed about “Gulliver’s Travels,” and the first thing is the chapter breaks. Every chapter and every section of which there are four has a summary and it’s stylistic. It looks nice, it also gives me the reader an idea of what to expect without spoiling the chapter. I love this. As a reviewer, I can go back and go “When was that thing he did on that island?” flip through all the chapters and find the right one.
Another thing I truly enjoyed about “Gulliver’s Travels” was just how diverse the world building is. I love how much effort and work went into the fantasy of the story. There is a type of human called “Struldbrugs,” and they are brilliantly added to the story. They come in for the third act, and I find them just fascinating. This kind of world-building I find comes more modernly in “urban” and “modern” fantasy stories. This type of character however I don’t see very often. I noticed that with the classical literature you have more versions of immortality that also has a horrific side effect that has nothing to do with vampires. I would love to see this story inspire different takes on that theme, and I think that it’s possible we could see a deviation to the ideas.
Another world building thing I enjoyed was the first part of the story with Lilliput. It’s amazing. The way the land is described, the city, the castle, the Emperor and his war with his enemies, the cultural issues, all of it is wonderfully done. Every island and place that Gulliver travels too is just as abundant with thought and understanding, and I do enjoy the various changes that come to it all. However, my love of the world building by no means ends with Lilliput. I also enjoyed what happened in part four with the horses. I don’t want to spoil anything, but if you haven’t ever read this book, part four is fantastic. I love the word yahoo even more now than before it was an internet company.
Next, let’s talk about the actual landscaping. The islands Gulliver travels to are fantastic. I truly enjoyed the images that he conveyed; he even developed ceremonies and religions with his character building. I thought this was wise, and I think it made for a more fun adventure.
Lastly, I want to say just how much I loved the story being a well-rounded story. Swift never missed a plot point; he tied up his adventures, he had the story come to a full and well-done arch. The character had a full arch as well, he grew and changed as time went on. I really loved just how well this was done. I think that fantasy writers can learn a lot of stylistic lessons, as well as whole story lessons from this book and use those things to improve their own writing.
Score
So after doing all the math “Gulliver’s Travels” has a 91/100 which is a five-star review on Amazon and Goodreads. If you love fantasy novels, you will love this one. I think this should be a go-to if you are writing in the modern fantasy genre for a take on how to transform the world you live in with the world you are building.
