Couldn't sleep last Tuesday. Three in the morning, Ranger snoring at the foot of the bed, Linda dead to the world. So I grabbed my earbuds and figured I'd tackle something I'd been putting off - Defoe's sequel to Robinson Crusoe. Nine hours of 18th-century adventure prose in the dark seemed like either a brilliant idea or a terrible one.
Turns out it was somewhere in between.
Crusoe's Second Deployment - Nobody Asked For
Let me cut to the chase: this is the book Defoe wrote because the first one sold like crazy and he wanted more money. Published in 1719, just four months after the original. And honestly? It reads like a sequel that exists for commercial reasons rather than narrative ones. Crusoe's wife dies - literally dispatched in a sentence or two - and suddenly our guy's got the itch again. He heads back to his island, which takes up roughly the first third, then spends the remaining two-thirds bouncing around Madagascar, Southeast Asia, China, and across Siberia.
The island return is the strongest section. Crusoe finds his little colony has devolved into factional squabbling - the Spaniards versus the English mutineers, with the native women caught in the middle. There's a brutal raid by canoe-borne warriors that actually got my pulse up around hour two. Crusoe plays diplomat and warlord, setting up governance structures and defenses. I've seen this scenario play out in real life - you leave a forward operating base in someone else's hands and come back to find everything's gone sideways. That part rang true.
But then Crusoe leaves the island and the book loses its anchor. The Madagascar section involves a massacre of natives by Crusoe's crew that's genuinely disturbing - and Defoe seems to be making a point about European violence, which is surprisingly progressive for 1719. But the pacing turns into a travelogue. China. The Great Wall. Siberia. It's episodic in the worst way, like a series of disconnected dispatches rather than a coherent story. Stephen King runs into the same trap in Just After Sunset - some of those stories land hard and others feel like he was just clearing out the drawer, and the unevenness grates in similar ways.
Friday Deserved Better
Here's what actually made me angry. Friday - loyal, brave, complicated Friday from the original - gets killed in a skirmish early in the book. Almost offhandedly. After everything the first novel built between these two characters, Defoe dispatches him in what feels like a paragraph so he can move on to new plot devices. It's the 18th-century equivalent of killing off a beloved character in the cold open of a sequel. Didn't sit right with me. Still doesn't.
The book's treatment of non-European peoples is... well, it's 1719. You're going to get what you're going to get. There are moments where Defoe seems genuinely curious about other cultures, and then passages that'll make you wince. Worth knowing going in.
Leeson Behind the Mic
Davide Leeson narrates this as a LibriVox recording, and I want to be fair about that context. This is volunteer work, public domain stuff, not a professional studio production. Leeson reads clearly and steadily, which for nine hours of dense 18th-century prose is no small feat. He doesn't do much in the way of character differentiation - everyone pretty much sounds like the same British reader - but given that the book is almost entirely Crusoe's first-person narration anyway, that's less of a problem than it would be in a dialogue-heavy novel.
What I will say: at 1.25x, Leeson's pace felt about right. At normal speed, the already meandering China and Siberia sections would've tested my patience beyond its limits. The audio quality is clean for a volunteer recording - no weird room echo or mic pops that I noticed during my 3 AM listening session.
Who Should Saddle Up For This
If you loved the original Robinson Crusoe and want more of that survival-on-the-island magic, temper your expectations. You get maybe three hours of island content, then it's a world tour. Literary history buffs and Defoe completists will find it interesting as an artifact - you can see the bones of the adventure novel being invented in real time, even when the execution stumbles. But if you're looking for a tight, propulsive adventure story by modern standards, this isn't your mission.
The free price point (LibriVox, public domain) changes the calculus. You're not spending a credit on this. You're spending time. And nine hours is a real commitment for a book that's genuinely good for about four of them.
Mission Debrief
Worth your time? Here's the debrief: the island section earns its keep. The rest is historically interesting but narratively scattered. Friday's death still bothers me. Ranger slept through the whole thing, which might be his review right there. If you're curious about the origins of adventure fiction and you've got a long drive through West Texas ahead of you, queue it up. Just don't expect the original's lightning to strike twice.
