Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #57001 in Books
• Published on: 2002-11-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 62 pages

Customer Reviews

My favourite Tintin story
I was given this book when I was at Primary and although its a bit battered and dog eared now its still with me and treasured. I have read most of the Tintin stories over the years but this one has to be my favourite. It made me interested in travel and in particular an interest in visiting the ancient city of Petra which is featured in this book.

Anyway, it has everything, fantastic locations, shipwrecks, plane crashes, gun running, slavery and lots of adventure. Tintin is of course accompanied by Snowy and Captain Haddock throughout. if you have to read one Tintin story, read this one!

Pure Genius
Tinitn and every Tintin book is a work of genuis (all right the TV spin off books are a bit pants)but all of the originals are the ideal Big brother/ Dad reading a bed time story. My father did them all with me and i am doing them with my son.

The sheer joy they bring to bedtime for me and my son is imeasurable.

One of the high points in the Tintin series!
This 1958 story (original title in Belgium: Coke en stock/cokes in voorraad) is a good place to start, or to give to someone else to get a first taste of a wonderful Tintin series. It has everything in a single volume: slapstick, adventure, exotic locations (Wadesdah, Petra) as well as homely ones (Captain Haddock's castle), evil adversaries, good friends, daring escapes; and the illustrator at the top of his form with crisp, clear drawings, beautiful coloring, excellent ship and airplane scenes. And for the loyal Tintin fan there are a host of old friends and acquaintances: general Alcazar, Abdullah, Dawson (from the Blue Lotus), d'Oliveira, Castafiore... and some surprising ones, too, which I won't give away so as not to spoil the surprise.

It is a story of its time, with Mosquitoes and DC-3s very 1950-s cars, and rather 1950-s treatment of `foreigners'; but Hergé's heart is in the right place with his feelings about arms dealers and slave traders. The book has an old-fashioned charm, but is also rather timeless and modern kids would enjoy it, I think.

I believe Hergé reached his peak in this and the two adjacent stories, the Calculus Affair and Tintin in Tibet. The perfect balance between jokes and adventure, good (the freeing of the slaves) and evil, and the perfect handling of colour, story and page lay-out, makes this an absolute topper.