The Sin Bearer Book

This is billed as an adventure story for younger readers.

One evening in March, when the days were lengthening fast, there came a messenger from Dorchester, and brought printed noticed for fixing to the shutters of the Why Not and the church door, which said that in a week's time a bailiff of the duchy of Cornwall would visit Moonfleet. This bailiff was an important person, and his visits stood as events in village history. Once in five years he made a perambulation, or journey, through the whole duchy, inspecting all royal properties, and arranging for new leases. His visits to Moonfleet were usually short enough, for owing to the Mohunes owning all the land, the only duchy estate there was the Why Not, and the only duty of the bailiff to renew that five-year lease under which the Blocks had held the inn, father and son, for generations. But for all that, the business was not performed without ceremony, for there was a solemn show of putting up the lease of the inn to the highest bidder, though it was well understood that no one except Elzevir would make an offer.

I was actually *more* patient with convoluted, old-fashioned prose when I was a kid than I am now, but I would have not finished this book. The friend who gave it to me read it at eight and only remembers how dull it was.

The main character, John, is weirdly lacking in personality, too. He's a little bit greedy, but not enough to be a serious character defect -- he doesn't have a family or great prospects, and who doesn't want to find a pirate treasure when they're 15? He doesn't have any friends, seemingly by choice. He isn't attached to the aunt with whom he lives; he seems to merely appreciate rather than care about adults who are kind to him. He likes a girl, and looking at the sea. There's just not a lot there to make me care about him.

Suckered by a neat title yet again. DNFing yet again.