Swindled out of his inheritance, recently orphaned David Balfour finds himself kidnapped and aboard a slave ship bound for the Carolinas shortly after the Jacobite rising of 1745. A shipwreck leads to a chance encounter and an unlikely rescuer. Highland rebel and suspected assassin Alan Breck Stewart. An incredible friendship blossoms between the two young men, who occupy opposite ends of the political and religious spectra. Together they return to the mainland, outwit many murderous foes and schemers, and attempt to restore David to his rightful fortune.

I gotta admit that this book is slightly overhyped on the internet. I read this book since I’ve read on internet that this book was very good, but after having actually read this book I need to say that this book is so much less impressive as people on the internet claim it to be. 

This book had a intriguing and good premise for a plot since we follow a 17-year-old named David Balfour, who is alone in the world of 1751 Scotland. I gotta admit that if I was him in that scenario I would be very fucked. 

The plot here is very sad because the main characters seems to be followed by a dark cloud of betrayal and danger while he is trying to search for his own identity after his father dies. 

I gotta admit that I liked the rich historical context this book has, and at the same time I also liked a lot this book’s backdrop of 18th-century Scotland. I found both of those aspects in this book to be very fun, interesting and intriguing and thats why I said above that this book had a intriguing and good premise for a plot.

The author is able to capture the landscape and cultural tensions of the time in which the plot of this book takes place in. Which in a way gives us a vivid sense of place. 

But there are a lot of times where this book drags a lot which made it difficult to say interesting and engaged in the book as I was reading it.

The main character here was okay for the most part. He begins as a very reliable protagonist for this book but the deeper we get into this book the more the main character’s journey begins to lack a form of depth to it which made it difficult for me at least to connect with him the deeper I went into this book. 

When it comes to the side characters of this book, they feel very one-dimensional and gave me the impression that the author didn’t really care about the side characters but needed them to connect the dots for the plot to be complete. 

The writing style in this book is fun because for the most part it is very rich, descriptive and it sets a very nice tone to the plot. But at times the writing style uses way too many words about situations or things which could have been explained in one sentence. And in a way this affects the action happening in this book, because the moment something interesting begins to happen the writing style uses way too many words to describe what is happening that it distracts you from the actual action happening.

I Give This Book 2 / 5