These books were such an easy read that I was able to finish the entire trilogy in one day.

Gordon Korman's Island series wasn't as fun for me as his Everest series -- possibly because the plot was a little less believable, in my opinion.

But the first book starts off in a promising way. It opens on Luke Haggerty, who's being sent on a sailing excursion called "Charting a New Course". He was framed by a classmate who brought a gun to school and is being forced to participate in the program as part of his sentence. The program teaches kids self-control and discipline through the hard work of sailing. Luke's shipmates include the captain, his weaselly first mate, Mr. Radford, and a few other troubled kids.

As the book's title leads you to believe, the kids do end up getting shipwrecked on an island. The first book covers their journey to this point. While there was a fair amount of action, I didn't think that this series did as good a job fleshing out the characters as the Everest series did. Many of them seemed more like mere caricatures to me, especially the character of Mr. Radford.

And one detail that rather annoyed me was how one of the characters, JJ Lane, is supposed to be the son of a famous director. Korman tries to legitimize his fame by dropping names of actual celebrities, which I think was a mistake on his part. The book will not bear well with time as a result, and JJ's relationships with these celebrities would be pretty improbable, even if he were a real celebrity kid. I personally thought it would have been better if Korman had made up celebrities instead of dropping real names.

All in all, though, I thought that Shipwreck was a fun read; not a bad way to pass time on the train.