A review by mdamico
Waverley by Walter Scott

adventurous slow-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? Yes
  • Diverse cast of characters? No
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated

4.0

As someone who became an accidental Walter Scott scholar, it only felt fair to review a Scott novel. Begrudgingly though it may have been at first, Scott grew on me - but he’s an acquired taste. Waverley is one of Scott’s works that depends even more so on knowing historical context regarding his period and the (semi-fictional) period he writes about. Without this knowledge, Waverley feels like it drags on forever, and you would come out of it feeling
pretty unsatisfied with the ending.
With this knowledge, it’s actually an incredibly clever work - it serves an underlying function as subtle propaganda towards achieving a certain political configuration in the time and place Scott was writing. 

Also,
there’s a scene where his future father-in-law, who’s basically a comedic rendition of the knight a la Don Quixote, defends Waverley’s honor against one of their dinner guests who suggests some unsavory things about Waverley’s political sympathies. They’re drunk and nearly come to blows and Waverley just kind of…watches. The scene makes me laugh heartily, though, in all fairness, that’s also partially thanks to the analysis I presented of the scene in my thesis.
 

I guess the point is, like most Scott works, if you put in the work and start to trudge through, by the end…you kind of like it.
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