Peter Duck Arthur Ransome

wow just amazing I felt that I was in the story and going on a journey with them . Well read

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Charming childhood adventure on the high seas

It is with great pleasure that I am revisiting the Swallows and Amazons series I first enjoyed as a child.

This, the third in the series, is the first with any sense of real peril, though of course the bad things only happen to the secondary characters. Susan is dependable and sensible as expected (oh to be excited by the gift of a first aid box as a Christmas Present), and all the characters remain true to form.

I liked the addition of extra characters of Peter Duck and Bill, and an actual sea voyage and buried pirate treasure! Wonderful stuff!

Of course the adult me wonders slightly at the plot - would the Swallow's crew's mother really have let them disappear with Captain Flint and the Amazons for weeks on end without knowing where in the world they'd gone? Would the children really have escaped unharmed from the happenings on the island?

But then I remember it's a book written for children from a completely different time, and allow my sense of disbelief to settle back into its state of suspension.

My top tips for maximum enjoyment of this series - read them in order, and don't overthink them!

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5 people found this helpful

A lovely story

I really enjoy Arthur Ransome and have read the books since I was young. When Audible made the audio books available I was delighted. However the voices I have created for the characters in my own head are so firmly established that I found the narrators voice didn't work for me at all. I understand that Gareth Armstrong needed to create different accents to seperate the chracters but really Nancy and Peggy with an "eccky thump" accent! The girls were both privately educated and brought up in an upper middle class houshold.
I think maybe I will stick with books (now on my reader) and the characters will sound as I want them to sound.

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4 people found this helpful

I was completely absorbed by this story

Would you recommend this audiobook to a friend? If so, why?

I read the Swallows and Amazons books when I was a young teenager and the characters have lived with me ever since. Now almost 30 years later I'm listening to the series again via Audible, I was completely absorbed by this story, the delivery by Gareth Armstrong is perfect. I have read criticism that his voices don't match the ones you imagine and that is always a risk with audio books but for me the voices were fine and differentiated the characters enough to make the story very easy to follow.

If you made a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

Adventure on the high seas, Swallows and Amazons forever!

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7 people found this helpful

Great Story with language “of its time”

This is more of an adventure that other books in the series. It is not made clear in the book that this is a fiction within a fiction i.e. it didn’t really happen to the characters but is a story made up by the children in the period between the first two books. It is alluded to in the second book, Swallowdale but unless you know, you might think the whole story rather unbelievable. There is more than a hint of Treasure Island here but if you listen to it from the point of view of it being a story made up by the characters in the book, it is a very enjoyable adventure.

I have to applaud the fact that none of the language has been changed for the purposes of political correctness but be warned. You may be offended by the multiple use of the N word and also terms such as D*go that appear. Whether such language was acceptable at the time, particularly in a childrens book, is debatable but it was written and the published text is what appears here, quite rightly in my opinion.

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3 people found this helpful

Enchanting

I’m a 65 year old boy (!) and this was a delightful rendition of a childhood adventure. Loved it!

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Arthur Ransom at his best

I didn't know what to expect with this book. It turned out to be a really good listen.

An adventure on the high seas with real grit and real air of menace in parts.

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A much loved book from childhood revisited.

Being a native of Lowestoft. I always had such fond memories of this book. I recently stood where Peter Duck first encountered our heroes and thought it way past high time I revisited this work. I was not disappointed. The work of fantasy wrapped inside a work of fiction is much better appreciated by an adult mind and is a nice compliment to the more homely Ransome adventures.
However as a native. I've never heard anyone hereabouts talk like a Cornish Pirate...

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-1 star for timeline confusion but thrilling, fun

If Peter Duck is introduced in book 3, why is he mentioned so much in book 2? Peter Duck stories, Peter Duck's cave, Peter Duck keeping the parrot imaginary company. Yet they met him I'm this book as though they had never heard of him or the name. I had to listen to some of the earlier part again as I was too busy trying to puzzle it out to really listen. otherwise another brilliant story, though much more thrilling and less relaxing it was harder to stop listening than ever.

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Another brilliant Ransome story

i loved this just as much as all the other Arthur Ransome stories. so much background knowledge and heart goes into each of these stories... Oh to be one of those youngests sailing the seas!!

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