Entertaining and lively prose, but fraught with inaccuracies and troubling historical attitudes.

From start to finish the trouble here is London's portrayal of whites enslaving Melanesians. His stories lend his sympathies evenly to all men, with the islanders having dignity and some of the whites being horrible brutes. But he still falls into the trap of portraying the islanders as Noble Savages. Or good servants, particularly troubling in the story The Heathen. I should be generous and say London was a man of his time but we look to fiction like this to elevate, to give insight, and I don't think London did.

The story that I liked best was The Seed of McCoy. Mostly because it doesn't revolve around the blackbirding slave trade. It's a straight-up two fisted tail of adventure on the High Seas, and very well written for that. His writing is so clean and smooth too, words honed for the craft.

Also troubled by inaccuracy, because we look to writing from 100 years ago for insight into its time. But Jack London never went to the South Pacific, so all these stories are secondhand. I think that's part of why his portrayal of islanders is so frustrating. Also I got stuck particularly on "Mauki"; a central plot point is the geography of Lord Howe Island, how it's flat and with no bush to hide. Only Lord Howe is a mountainous island, with plenty of bush. It's a tiny point, just change the island name and the story works, but it irritated me and made me wonder what else was inaccurate.