The Three Musketeers is my second Alexandre Dumas book, with the first being The Count of Monte Cristo that I read earlier this year. After having enjoyed Cristo so much, I had fairly high hopes for this book to live up to.
Unfortunately, this book didn’t live up to how good Monte Cristo was. It was quite “bitty” throughout, with the scenes feeling incredibly disjointed from one another, rather than as one cohesive book. This was true both between different POVs, and even moving from one scene to another from the same POV. It wasn’t until after around page 300 that these scenes started to actually feel cohesive and part of a story rather than scenes in a vignette.
Once I had hit that 300 page mark, I enjoyed the book a lot more. Our protagonists have been developed enough by this point that I felt some connection to them, and enjoyed the story a lot more. I still didn’t think this end section was as good as The Count of Monte Cristo, but it was good enough that it redeemed the book a fair bit.
On CAWPILE I rated this: Characters: 6, Atmosphere: 6, Writing: 6, Plot: 5, Intrigue: 4, Logic: 4, Enjoyment: 5, with an overall score of 5.57 and a 3* rating.
I’m still debating whether or not I’m going to be reading more in the D’Artagnan Romances series, I’ve heard that The Man in the Iron Mask is supposed to be a good book but I’d need to read everything before that just to get to it. Have you read The Three Musketeers and any of the following books? What did you think of it, do let me know!
After how hectic the end of May was, I thought I’d be a little more down low for June and only put 10 books onto my tbr (yes… I’m aware that’s still a lot. This was as low as I could get it!) A couple audiobooks, one non-fiction, and a load of fantasy. Perfect!
My tbr video is already up if you’d rather consume this in video form!
Not included in the 10 is The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, which I’m reading one chapter a day of. I’m carrying on with it in June and I’m actually hoping to finish it this month! We’ll have to wait and see.
Then, the TBR jar returned this month! And from that I’m picking up The Muse by Jessie Burton. This is a historical fiction set between the 1960s and 1930s that follows art, or more accurately, one painting. This was gifted to me by my little sister back in 2016 and I really do need to get around to it!
Because I’m one of the co-hosts for MiddleEarthAThon I really should have read the Lord of the Rings… and I haven’t. So I’m wanting to listen to the audiobook of The Fellowship of the Ring by J.R.R. Tolkein! One of the most well known high fantasy books, and it’s a wee bit shameful I’ve not read it yet 😂
And for my second audiobook, Plain Bad Heroines by Emily M. Danforth. This is an LGBTQ+ gothic historical fiction, and I really know basically nothing else. But my friend Lizzie enjoyed it (from LizzieIsElf) so why not! It’s a long audiobook, just under 20 hours, so I’ll most likely start this one after reading LotR.
Rivers of London by Ben Aaronovitch is a longstanding fantasy series that I’ve seen around for a few years now, it follows a detective around a magical version of our London. I love a good mystery, as well as a fantasy, so I’m hoping this combination really works for me.
Vox by Christina Dalcher is a dystopian where women can only speak 100 words a day. Any more and they get hit with 1000 volts of electricity. I enjoy concepts like these, but I am wary of it being “women” who are impacted by this. How does this then impact trans women, or non-binary folk, or trans men? I’m not expecting this book to be aware enough to cover this topic but I’ll be super pleasantly surprised if it does.
Another social commentary kind of book, 84k by Claire North. This is set in a world where each life has a monetary value, and if you can afford the price you can do whatever you like. Including murder. Our main character doesn’t care, until someone they love has their life bought.
Hannah from LadetteM sent me The Atlas Six by Olivie Blake when she was unhauling it. She really didn’t vibe with it, but I also enjoyed Addie LaRue, which Hannah hated sooooo I thought it was worth giving a shot to a fantasy world where only 5 people will get a place in this society each year.
For my non-fiction of the month I’m going for Minnesota’s Geologist by Sue Leaf, which was a present from Kari from Kar-ing for Books who lives in the state and knows I’m always down to learn about geology! I’m super excited for this one and have been for a while.
The Goldsboro GSFF box for May gave us The Collarbound by Rebecca Zahabi, this is advertised as a magical, brink-of-war setting and I really do enjoy political fantasy and have had fantastic success with previous GSFF books so I’m excited for this one!
And finally is the Illumicrate book from the May box which is Book of Night by Holly Black. I’ve never been interested in Black’s books before, but this one has a woman who is fantastic with explosives and I am totally here for that. I just hope it’s a good one!
And that’s my June TBR! Let me know if you’ve read any of these books and what you thought of them. And let me know one book that’s on your TBR, I’m always here to add more books to the list!
The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas was mine and Olivia Savannah’s second big book that we were buddy reading together (after we read War and Peace together last year) and we went for a chapter a day again. But despite this book being just as big as War and Peace, the chapters were a lot bigger and so we were able to get through it a lot quicker!
The book does start out with quite a long set up. Of course Dumas is trying to establish a connection with the characters, but because I knew the plot and concept of the book I was just impatient to get to the juicy part of the plot! But once we’d hit the inciting incident I was super super into the book and I was struggling to put it down after the one chapter each day!
I adored a character named Fiari. His attitude and his method of spreading his thoughts is just beautiful and was perfect for the situation that he was in. It was also so brilliant to see his statements be proven true after being ridiculed for them by others. The Morrell family are some of my favourites also, with the whole family being very driven by honour and ensuring they treat everyone they know well. I also enjoyed Mercedes and Albert. They really show their true strength closer to the end of the novel and it adds another dimension to their characters. And of course I found Dantes enthralling, but I like Dantes more than Cristo (which will only make sense if you’ve read it)
Dumas is masterful throughout this text at interweaving stories and characters throughout the narrative and over the timeframe for the book. Everything that’s mentioned is relevant and interlinks in the most intricate of ways. Some of which you can see coming, and some of which totally blindside you when you get to them. Things don’t just go perfectly for our protagonist either, there are setbacks and bumps along the way which cause him to alter his plans to try and continue with his revenge against those who wronged him.
On CAWPILE I rated this: Characters: 8, Atmosphere: 8, Writing: 7, Plot: 8, Intrigue: 7, Logic: 8, and Enjoyment: 7 giving an average of 7.57 and a 4* rating.
I can’t believe the book is done! We finally finished it! Of course thank you so so much to Olivia for reading through this with me, it was lovely to be talking to her every day again like we were most of last year! And hearing her insights and having discussions 100% added to the reading experience.
The book itself was a ride from start to end, and I really did enjoy myself. Unfortunately there is racism present in this book, with the mistreatment of a Black disabled man, as well as a positive slave narrative with scenes involving a 19 year old slave and an older man. Neither me nor Olivia had seen this discussed at all before we read the book, so please do be aware of that going in (speaking of, trigger warnings will be below).
Overall, this is a magnificent tale of revenge. Of becoming someone new and losing yourself along the way. It’s an incredibly readable book and definitely is not as daunting as it seems as a large classic. If you’ve thought about picking this up then please do delve in! And if you’ve read it already? Discuss your thoughts on it with me in the comments below!!
Highlight here for trigger warnings: confinement, suicidal thoughts, suicide, child death, death, infanticide, violence, death of parent, murder, genocide, infidelity, slavery, racism, torture, toxic relationship, trafficking, grief, colonisation, homophobia, incest, blood.
Abi of Pellinor 