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A review by wynwicket
The Vicomte de Bragelonne by Alexandre Dumas
5.0
I confess to strong bias: Dumas is my favorite author. Even when his prose is at its purplest, it makes my heart beat a little faster.
Book 1 in The Vicomte de Bragelonne (a single LONG work broken into three books, of which this is the first, that culminates in and ends the Musketeer Saga with The Man in the Iron Mask) was excellent. D'Artagnan, who has always seemed flamboyantly over-cocky, is more grown-up now, and the power-mad Cardinal Richelieu has been replaced with the power-mad Mazarin and a very young Louis XIV, who is just starting to become the Sun King.
The history, though gently mangled by Dumas, is easier to follow here. There are plenty of secret plots, much manly chest-beating and defenses of honor, a touch of a love story or two, and a hint of derring-do. I live for this stuff.
Also, I have to add that the Oxford World's Classics edition has pages of good historical and literary notes, and there's a really good list of historical personages that appear in the saga.
Book 1 in The Vicomte de Bragelonne (a single LONG work broken into three books, of which this is the first, that culminates in and ends the Musketeer Saga with The Man in the Iron Mask) was excellent. D'Artagnan, who has always seemed flamboyantly over-cocky, is more grown-up now, and the power-mad Cardinal Richelieu has been replaced with the power-mad Mazarin and a very young Louis XIV, who is just starting to become the Sun King.
The history, though gently mangled by Dumas, is easier to follow here. There are plenty of secret plots, much manly chest-beating and defenses of honor, a touch of a love story or two, and a hint of derring-do. I live for this stuff.
Also, I have to add that the Oxford World's Classics edition has pages of good historical and literary notes, and there's a really good list of historical personages that appear in the saga.