The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

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Title: The Three Musketeers Author: Alexandre Dumas Genre: Classics Rating: 8/10 # pages: 965 Date read: April, 2008

Summary: Mixing a bit of seventeenth-century French history with a great deal of invention, Alexandre Dumas tells the tale of young D'Artagnan and his musketeer comrades, Porthos, Athos and Aramis. Together they fight to foil the schemes of the brilliant, dangerous Cardinal Richelieu, who pretends to support the king while plotting to advance his own power. Bursting with swirling swordplay, swooning romance, and unforgettable figures such as the seductively beautiful but deadly femme fatale, Milady, and D'Artagnan's equally beautiful love, Madame Bonacieux, The Three Musketeers continues, after a century and a half of continuous publication, to define the genre of swashbuckling romance and historical adventure.

Review: Now this is what I call a true classic. It has it all - love, hate, intrigues, fighting, people pretending to be somebody they're not, secrets... no wonder it's such a popular book to turn into a movie. It has a lot of the same atmosphere as Robin Hood (the movie, not the book), Ivanhoe etc. except that in this one the heros have faults and flaws. I didn't always like the four main characters nor think they acted nobly - unlike e.g. Robin Hood, they weren't always selflessly good, they had temperaments and vices... in short, they were human.

The only reason why I didn't rate it higher is that Alexandre Dumas was paid by the word, and at times it shows as the book is occasionally rather slow-moving. Not enough to make me give up on it obviously, but enough that I didn't rush through it like I would a really excellent book

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Comments

[bogormen.livejournal.com]

Probably nothing. Mine was a heavily illustrated version, so it wouldn't surprise me if the remaining 200 pages were all pictures.

The Count is on my to-read list as well :-)