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minniesmiscellanies 's review for:
The Black Tulip
by Alexandre Dumas
4,5*
The premise of this is very similar to its elder, fatter-by-1.000-pages brother The Count of Monte Cristo: A young man, about to achieve his life's dreams, is accused of high treason (which he is, if we're perfectly honest, not entirely innocent, albeit ignorant of) by a personal enemy and thrown into prison, with no prospect of ever getting out. But while The Count of Monte Cristo is a lot more sprawling and follows many different plotlines of revenge, love, money and adventure, The Black Tulip keeps strictly to the three themes it introduces in the first few chapters of exposition - politics (although only very tangentially), romance, and, most prominently but at the same time closely entangled with the other two, the race to grow the prized black tulip. The result is perhaps a little bit less grand, but also much more streamlined; the plot moves at an incredibly fast yet fluid pace, the characters are well-crafted, and the plot twists are seamless. Just to be clear, I enjoyed it exactly as much as The Count of Monte Cristo, but the latter is still my favourite book of all time - nobody said ratings have to make any sense!
The premise of this is very similar to its elder, fatter-by-1.000-pages brother The Count of Monte Cristo: A young man, about to achieve his life's dreams, is accused of high treason (which he is, if we're perfectly honest, not entirely innocent, albeit ignorant of) by a personal enemy and thrown into prison, with no prospect of ever getting out. But while The Count of Monte Cristo is a lot more sprawling and follows many different plotlines of revenge, love, money and adventure, The Black Tulip keeps strictly to the three themes it introduces in the first few chapters of exposition - politics (although only very tangentially), romance, and, most prominently but at the same time closely entangled with the other two, the race to grow the prized black tulip. The result is perhaps a little bit less grand, but also much more streamlined; the plot moves at an incredibly fast yet fluid pace, the characters are well-crafted, and the plot twists are seamless. Just to be clear, I enjoyed it exactly as much as The Count of Monte Cristo, but the latter is still my favourite book of all time - nobody said ratings have to make any sense!