Wow. What a place! After I finished the reading, I immediately researched Funk Island and found out some really interesting things about the place. First, it is now a bird sanctuary with over 1,000,000 birds on the island! That is amazing. You are not allowed to go to the island anymore, unless you have a permit of sorts.

The history of this island is also very sad- humans wiped put the last of the Great Auks, which lived on the island, in the 1800's. They killed the flightless birds for oil, feathers, and meat. They have found "rooms" made by people to direct the Great Auks into so that they would be easier to kill. It is difficult to decide what is more disgusting-the layers of gauno and rotten eggs on the island, or the actions of the people who ruthlessly slaughtered and made extinct an amazing creature. I'll go with the latter.

The depiction of the island was pretty incredible. From the perilous landing to the ungodly stench and the visual decay, it is hard to not look away, as so to speak. This is a very good example of how a writing does not need pictures to illustrate it's point- it transcends any sort of visual example that it could have used, but thankfully didn't. I enjoyed visualizing the rocky coasts with it's manmade handholds, the layers of rotting eggs with the birds falling off the cliffs. It was chaotic, and amazing really. I would like to read more from this author- especially what he wrote during his time that he actually stayed on Funk Island.