Customer Reviews

Spice Islands Voyage

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I bought this book to read about Maluku (the "Spice Islands"), one of my favourite regions in the World, but instead found myself reading far too much about the author's obsession with Alfred Wallace, whose voyages he is trying to follow.

While he does give a description of places few other recent travelogues cover, these places are always viewed through his expectations of them based on Wallace's book which was written back in the 19th century. He keeps mourning how the Moluccas are not the same today as they were described by Wallace - hey, can one expect any place to remain unchanged for 150 years?

I spent well over a year travelling around these islands myself, and really think they would deserve to be appreciated for what they are now - still a beautiful and fascinating region with a rich natural environment and incredibly friendly people - rather just being treated as a background to raving about a naturalist who visited them a century and a half ago!

A more sympathetic and insightful description of Maluku is Ambon: Island of Spices by Shirley Deane.

The Spice Island voyage is parallel story for the
authories sailing experience in the spice island
and of the 1800 century Alfred Wallace.
It's a facinating tale of two eras and how socially
and environmentally the old and new world are
much the same but changed in many ways. The book
is well written with references to Alfred Wallace's
written submission to Darwin about the orgin of the species.
Evidence is given that Wallace may have been the
major contributor to the general theory that species
evolved because of the environment.

The modern day adventurers build and sail an boat
of an old Indonesian design. The voyage follows the
route of Alfred Wallace who sailed the same waters years
earlier. There is a sad message of environmental
destruction caused by the need of Indonesians to survive.
The book is stimulating and created a want to read more
of Tom Severin books

Brian Tyhy