The Jason Voyage | a Review
originally published on 22/12/2023;
Hello everyone, I am the bewildered and confused G.E.M.Simov, a person expecting the voyage of Jason… Who was, instead, greeted by the voyage of Tim Severin, as recounted by him in his book: "The Jason Voyage".
Simple review details - I rank books on an out of 10 basis, granting up to 3 points in 3 categories, as well as a last, single point from my own self, depending on my experience with it.
It is important to point out that the edition I read was a translation and was not in English, so there might be a slight difference in the process of reading and understanding.
Content
I looked this book out of the shelves thinking I would be reading fiction. I wound up reading non-fiction.
"The Jason Voyage" is a book about a dude recreating the voyage of Jason and the Argonauts, but it is not an imagined dude and an imagined recreation - it is a real dude and a real recreation. As such, it does not dive into any concepts and fails to explore them at all.
Most of the book is simply a retelling of the events that transpired, in as inoffensive a manner as possible. Due to the fact that the only "Character" the author has access to is himself, and then he does not talk about himself at all, there is no room for rumination on anything. There is no question as to why do people do things, perhaps in relation to why someone would make such a massive voyage 3000 years ago, or perhaps why the only solution to any situation winds up being violence, or anything at all.
There are no such things related to it. There is no message that the book carries, nor is there a great bit of meaning to it. It seemingly has no content.
However, at the same time, it does. By merit of being a real retelling of real events, it winds up having incredible value as something that describes things. How ships are built, how they are operated, how folks do things - that winds up being very clearly presented to the reader.
Facts and information, piled on and on, in a digestible manner, and all of it more interesting than the next. It starts off relatively tame, but then it becomes more and more incredible. The particulars of how a gallery is prevented from crashing against the waves via rowing, the minutiae of how ancient gold prospectors prospected for gold via fleeces - those are things that one is very unlikely to find out without either looking for them explicitly, which is quite implausible, visiting a museum and being lucky enough to have it house such an item, or reading scientific literature.
This book provides that information - without it being far too precise - in a most intriguing and pleasing manner. It also answers some actual questions - such as whether Jason and the Argonauts were real, or if they were, at least, based on something real.
It also winds up acting as a very peculiar time capsule, telling some tales of the world as it was almost half a century ago. Alas, there's something that is, simply put, missing.
There was stuff in this book. Stuff that was incredibly valuable. However, at the same time, it was incredibly inconsequential. It also fails to provoke the reader, not does it provide the reader with anything that may lead into a great change within said reader's mindset or worldview.
It's a non-fiction book that does not examine humanity, but, rather, a very particular moment in humanity's history and how it was remembered. That is content, though it does not leave one content. 1/3
Richness of Expression
Impressively good, maybe. Even if it is not, it is what comes to mind - "The Jason Voyage" is a book that I expected would be dryer and less entertaining or engaging, but Tim Severin's means of expression wins me over.
There really was nothing exceptional about it - aside from colorful, vivid descriptions of things, the use of terminology not commonly found in one's dictionary, such as that related to sailing, and, well… That about does it. It was not vibrantly brilliant, it did not wow me with the smoothness of its flow or with the exotic-ness of its words, but it did the job.
It somewhat did, actually. It had a failing - a relatively major one at that - and that was the fact that its paragraphs were head-spinningly long. It was a bit obtuse, reading through the three paragraphs on the page with 44 lines of text. That really fought against the book's readability.
There were also times when connective tissue was missing - such as words like "of" or "on" - and then there were also some questionable translations, but the latter are being attributed to the dinghy publisher of the version I read. Still, there really is not much to say about it, other than that it was passable. 2/3
Story
Right off the bat, this book does not have a story. It does not have anything that is imagined, it does not have anything that is made up and built, it does not have Characters and it has no Character arcs. Why?
Because it's just a stylized retelling of something that happened. "The Jason Voyage" is a book that shares the details of Tim's Severin's excessively expensive and silly adventure of finding a traditional shipbuilder to build him a gallery, and then sailing with that gallery from a place in Greece to a place in Georgia, emulating the trip Jason and the Argonauts took on their way to obtain the golden fleece.
Is the tale interesting? Definitely. Are the people in it interesting? One hundred percent, for people are positively sublime and quirky beyond comprehension. But is it a story, and are those people Characters?
It can be said that it is a story, and that these people fulfill the roles of Characters in that story, and it can be said that there is a plot that can be found within this book, as can be found slight changes that occur within people, which can be interpreted as Character Development. However, the fact that analysis can be applied to things that are not stories, and are instead reality, does not mean they can be judged as stories.
So how am I to proceed? It was an interesting read, and it did not spoil itself to the very end - will the new Argonauts make it to their destination, or will they fail? That was a very interesting question that drove me to read on. Additionally, there was also another question, and that was whether the mythical story of Jason and the Argonauts was rooted in reality or not, as well as what proof would be found in regards to that question.
Those hooks, if they can be so called, were constantly present reasons to keep reading. Not only that, but the book's shortness and decently okay-ish pace made it very readable, as a result of which I'm hard pressed to say anything exceedingly bad about its Story, aside from the fact that there is, simply, no story - there's nothing imagined.
Thus, I'll give it a passing grade, but dock a point. 2/3
Legendary Point
Does this book get the Legendary point, so craved and wanted by all and none at the same time?
Definitely not, though the way it ignited sparks of wonder in regards to history and archaeology in me, as well as how it revealed minute dayly-life details regarding not only sailors but also other kinds of people was very entertaining and I found it to be very precious.
Alas, this book left me unsatisfied. Perhaps it is owed up to the fact that I expected a retelling of the story of Jason and the Argonauts with a modern spin, perhaps it was because of something else - but I felt cheated when I found out that the book was about a guy recreating voyages. 0/1
Conclusion
5/10. "The Jason Voyage" is a very odd book. It's perfectly average, yet at the same time it's not something that I can recommend to anyone off the top of my head. Perhaps historians, or anthropologists, or fans of Greek Mythology? Aside from that, though, it really isn't something I'd say is for everyone.
In the bag of mediocrity it goes. Neat, but ultimately forgettable and prone to becoming dusty.