In this, the penultimate completed Tintin story, Tintin and his companions (Snowy, Haddock and Calculus) end up on a private jet which is hijacked and landed on a remote island in the West Pacific by a group of hoodlums. These men are intent on relieving one of the world's richest men (the superbly arrogant and vile Carreidas) of some of his vast fortune. However, the island which are they landed on has more secrets than even the bad guys banked on though...
Flight 714 is a dark story, though not without much of the humour that you often get with later Tintin and its ensemble cast, it is even a bit post-modern at times with quite a few recurring jokes from earlier in the series. The violence is rawer, less comical than the early Tintin days but i find the emotions which that brings up helps make Flight 714 a very engaging read.
Flight 714 has been criticised though for its deus ex machina resolution as it involves extraterrestrials. However. i have no problem with this, the story was written at a time when the ancient astronauts theory as popularised by Erich Von Daniken was very popular, and alien abductions and sightings were very common. This book really caught the late 60s zeitgeist, but in subsequent years Von Daniken's ideas have become discredited. This doesn't detract from the excitement such fantastic ideas cause if they were true, nor indeed the quality of Flight 714.
It has some of the best examples of artwork in any Tintin story, some of the scenes such as the jet landing, can only be described as cinematic and breathtaking. The story is not perfect though, some of the small universe syndrome which Tintin suffers from crops up again, as the same bad guys we've seen quite a few times already in early books return again. The story also seems to finish fairly abruptly. These are only minor points, while it might be less accessible than some earlier Tintin books, Flight 714 is truly a good story.
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