Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson

Overall impressions:
Good. The classic Scots terminology can take some getting used to. An eBook with a dictionary would be helpful.

Not what I was expecting. I just assumed a pirate novel because I associate Robert Louis Stevenson with Treasure Island, which is a very silly thing to assume.

Recommendation:
For those that read classic fiction, yes.
If you are interested in dipping your toes in classic fiction, it is a very good entry point. Not too long, but definitely has a more classic writing style.
If you are not very interested in classic fiction or don't like fiction in general, no. I don't think anything in this book would change your mind about either if you are not already inclined to be interested.

Basic plot:
A young man, David, inherits a large estate. His miserly uncle, in an attempt to prevent David from getting the estate, sells him into slavery via kidnapping. The ship taking him to South Carolina runs into a crushes a small boat. One of the passengers, Alan Breck Stewart, escapes death and is picked up by the ship.

The captain and crew decide to kill the passenger and rob him. David, overhearing that, warns the passenger and the two of them fight the crew to a standstill. Due to mistrust, the crew can't do their job properly and the ship runs aground in western Scotland.

While following Alan's trail, David ends up on the scene of a famous murder in Scottish history. At the scene he rejoins with Alan, who partook in the Jacobite Rebellion and is anti-English, and the two then engage in a flight across Scotland to escape the authorities and to reclaim David's inheritance.

The novel cover's historical Scottish events. The difference between highland and lowland Scots. It also features small ale, which was a term for the very low ABV beers that people drank instead of water. As a brewer, I found that amusing. There's a lot of historical stuff in there. Robert Louis Stevenson was writing from the 1800s and seems to have been big on research.

The story takes a while to get going. It's almost half-way through (at least in chapters) before the plot really kicks off. The meeting the uncle, the ship travels, and the initial wandering through western Scotland are all building up to the murder and flight. It's introduction and background.

Those parts aren't unrelated to the plot, but it does seem like a lot of buildup. It shows a lot of Alan and David as people so you can believe that Alan isn't responsible for the murder. The court case convicted him, but history has decided that he probably wasn't guilty.

Details I really liked:
The struggle for food felt very real. This is something missing from many modern novels. Pre-refrigeration and weaker farming tech makes a big difference in food availability, storage, and transport. Food is difficult and is very frequently bland because you got cold oatmeal because that is what is available and can be made while in hiding.

When David kills someone for the first time while helping defend Alan from the treacherous crew, it caused him a lot of mental anguish that, again, feels very real in a way that, again, many modern novels don't capture. Either the guilt of killing of glossed over or it is overwrought.

The novel deals with multiple languages well. Many of the highland Scots do not speak English or they speak very little. David only speaks English. That inability to communicate is shown very well through David's wanderings alone in the highlands. Alan being a translator is a valuable asset. Also, highlanders getting offends at David's lack of Gaelic is very realistic.

Characters:
None of them really stuck out to me. All the characters play their roles. Only the main characters, David and Alan, get that much screen time or depth. David mentions some positive sides of the crew in passing. Riach in particular is shown to have a good side, but has little compunction against killing Alan for his money. The uncle Ebenezer has a bit more in his backstory to give him some complexity over a simple greedy miser.

David and Alan showing loyalty and friendship to each other is the key theme of the story. Starting from David warning Alan of the crew's plans and helping him against their assault. Throughout the story, both have opportunities to abandon the other. And, in those times, would be better served by abandoning each other. Even when they come into conflict with each other and their differences in ethnicity, national loyalty, religion, and temperaments stoke that conflict, their shared debts and trials keep them together.

this very interesting novel and the story of this novel is awful whenever you read this novel you feel afraid
and you trying to secure yourself. ( )

A letter which surfaced only after his father's death sends David Balfour off to Edinburgh, where he meets his elderly uncle Ebenezer. Though rather unpleasant, Ebenezer appears to welcome David, only to turn around and arrange for his kidnapping aboard a ship bound for America. When the vessel founders during a storm, David lies stranded on a small, rocky island in the Hebrides, alone and unsure how he'll ever make his way back home.

I'm confident that at the time of its publication, this would have been an exciting book to get one's hands on. Today, though? It's just OK, but perhaps a bit too dull to compete with contemporary adventure novels. The most interesting aspect to me was following David's journey on a map as I read, curious about the terrain traversed and towns passed through. It might be helpful to have some basic familiarity with the '45 to understand the political factions and motivations for some characters' behavior. Worth a read if you're working your way through a list of "classics." ( )

I really enjoyed becoming acquainted with the Scottish dialect in this book, lots of fun with an unfamiliar branch of English. I was helped by the glosses in the Project Gutenberg version, and the dictionary built into my e-reader had definitions of a surprising percentage of the words. The story itself was not too intriguing, a fairly pedestrian (well, they WERE on foot the whole way) adventure tale but it kept my interest throughout. ( )

I read the 1958 Pocket Library edition of this book and was very disappointed. I did like how Stevenson portrayed David Balfour, even though his altruism was unrealistic. I did not like all the fighting, killing, and gruesome scenes, and do not feel children need to be exposed to all of that at young ages. I also did not understand most of the book because of the Scottish language and slang, but I was able to get the basics of the story. ( )