This isn’t the edition I read (my cover was quite boring), but I liked this one because it illustrates one of my main problems with this book by Robert Louis Stevenson: the age of the main character, David Balfour.

I pictured David as a 14- or 15-year-old kid, maybe slightly older than Jim in Treasure Island. Sure, that gives David the role of the “wise and noble youth”, which drives me nuts, but I figured I could deal with it. David’s adventures start when he receives a letter saying that, with the death of his father, he’s come into an inheritance that he never knew he had. He goes in search of it, and finds a crabby, miserly old uncle, who tries to kill David. That not succeeding (David — oh, wise and noble youth — was too smart for that), he arranges to have a captain of a merchant ship headed for the Carolinas (it’s 1751) kidnap David in order to sell him into indentured servantship.

That works, and David sets off. However, as fate would have it, the weather is against the ship, and they don’t get far before ramming into another boat, killing everyone on board except for Alan Breck Stewart (who, as I found out through Wikepedia, is a real historical person). Alan and David fall in, take over the ship (well, there’s a murderer on board, and, as you know, Right always wins, especially when paired with Might), but end up separated and David is abandoned on an island (off the coast of Scotland. They didn’t get far.). David spends four days starving himself on the island, before he realizes that he could walk across the reef to the mainland (maybe he’s not so wise and noble?). He sets out in search of Alan again, and on his way runs into Alan’s old arch enemy, the Red Fox. Someone kills said fox while David’s standing there, and they determine that David’s an accomplice, so he sets off (bumping into, and joining in said flight with, Alan along the way), running for his life.

It sounds okay in a plot summary, but actually it was pretty dry and boring. Punctuated with the insufferable David’s moralizing. He eventually falls out with Alan because … I don’t even care why. I think it was because Alan was in more danger than David and David thought he’d fare better on his own. Or maybe it’s because Alan lived by his sword, which offended David. My favorite bit was when David challenged Alan to a duel, thinking he’d win. As if.

At any rate, David (of course: he’s the wise and noble youth) got his inheritance back because he got Alan to trick David’s uncle into admitting that he’d paid twenty pounds to have David kidnapped (but not killed). I didn’t really care by that point. (Though it was interesting to find out that David was 20 years old. I don’t know why I cared, but it seemed to make a bit of a difference. Not much, though.)

Long and short of it: if you want to read a Robert Louis Stevenson book, stick with Treasure Island. This one just isn’t worth it.