The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas book review

 

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas book review

The Three Musketeers by Alexander Dumas book Going into it I knew literally nothing about the three musketeers other than there were three musketeers. Like I didn't know what this plot was like, I've never seen or read or experienced any sort of adaptation of this. 

So I legitimately had zero exposure to the three musketeers. So this whole experience with reading this book has been really interesting for me because I really didn't know what to expect. And I feel like what you get out of this book is not at all what you can infer from pop culture. 

Like I'm the type of person where I pick up a lot of things about like classic movies and classic books just based on the way that people talk about it. And the way that people talk about the three musketeers feel so far off from this book.

And I don't know if that's just because adaptations change it so much or what. But yeah, this this book is not at all what I thought it was going to be. And that's not a bad thing either. Overall I liked my experience reading this book. 

I mentioned this when I first like announced the read along that I really wanted to read a book that was more fun and plot driven than like heady and philosophical or like super confusing because it's translated from language that's just like difficult to get into aka the Russians. So yeah, I think that this book it did deliver all of that. 

Of course the downside to that is that there's not as much character development. So I have read that The Count of Monte Cristo that is actually the first big book month-long project that I ever attempted and I did that before i joined booktube. 

So i sort of had that as like a comparison point for this book as well. A lot of times while I was reading this book, I was thinking back on my experience with reading the Count of Monte Cristo. Now I read the Counte of Monte Cristo back in like 2008. 

So it's probably been like a decade since I read that book. So obviously I don't have like super clear thoughts and feelings about The Count of Monte Cristo. But I feel like that book is so much stronger than this one. 

I mean, obviously it depends on like what you like in stories. Like if you are the type of person who loves plot driven stories then you're probably going to gravitate towards this one more than the Count of Monte Cristo. 

Not that that one's slower but that one also deals a lot with like character development and these thoughts about like revenge and it's like action justification and things like that. And that's stuff that I really enjoy. 

So I really enjoyed the Counte of Monte Cristo because you get to follow the single character and watch them go on this journey of escaping from prison and finding person who like did them wrong and justifying their actions and all this stuff. 

And that sort of moral complexity is always really, really interesting. Whereas while there's moral complexities happening in this book, it's very much more like plot driven. This book was also written in like a serial format. 

And so like all the chapters feel like mini episodes themselves. So yeah, I feel like for me like this was a fun experience and there are a lot of twists and turns in here. It feels like you're experiencing like a season or two of a TV show with all of the things that happen in here. 

Like there's so many action scenes and so many like plot twists and turns that happen in here that there's no way to expect what happens in this book. One of my big things that I was very surprised by is like how much this story changes over the course of this book. 

Like it feels like this in and of itself could have been like two separate novels. Like everything that happens at the end of the story, while obviously like they're all connected, it feels like so far from where you start. 

And it's really surprising to think about how far d'Artagnan as character changes. Yeah without getting into spoilers, just how things change so significantly from the beginning of the book to the end of the book. 

One of the things I will say that I'm kind of disappointed by is just like the lack of development with the three musketeers themselves. Like this is mainly, or at least to me, it felt mainly like the story of d'Artagnan wanting to become a musketeer and it's not really as much about the three musketeers. 

Like obviously they have significant parts in the story and they play significant roles, but it feels like the three musketeers are actually side characters more than anything else. And especially like one of the Musketeers, I probably couldn't even tell you his name because he played such a minor minor role in this story. 

Like in this edition of the book, Tom Gould actually made illustrations of all of the characters. And I'm not even joking when I say that I had to continually look at this to remember what the third Musketeers name was because they also both start with 'A'. Like Athos and Aramis I legitimately kept confusing.

I was like is this the same person? No it's not. So yeah, I don't know. It's just, it feels like the Three Musketeers weren't as big of a part of the story as I was thinking that they were going to be and that let me down just a little bit, to be completely honest. And I know that this book is like the first in a series. 

I think there are three books in this series. I'm not completely sure about that. And so this book does a good job of sort of like also setting things up for future books. So everything in this story basically wraps up but there's enough that happens at the end that you're like, oh, I would actually continue following on with these characters.

Now will I continue on? That's a different question. I don't know if I'm that intrigued by the story. I mean, maybe it'll be a good one to go back to at some point but I'm not like clamoring to continue on with this series. 

So yeah, I don't know. In the end I gave this book a 3 out of 5 stars because I liked it but it didn't have that like something special that really gripped me. I think just again the way that the characters are portrayed in here just there's not enough depth, there's not enough, I don't know complexity to them I suppose is just like the way it would describe it. 

I think that the women in here sort of served an injustice for the most part. And Amanda from heyheybooks actually posted on Instagram about this and I like reposted in my Instagram stories about how if there was a book following m'lady as an assassin, that would be a fantastic story and I completely agree with that.

Like if there was some sort of retelling, can someone write that retelling for me? Because yeah, I think that that would be a really interesting storyline. But otherwise I don't really like the way that the women are fleshed out or treated in this story. 

Like I already ranted a little bit in the last video about how terrible Kitty is treated in this story. It's really, really terrible. So yeah, if you are interested in Three Musketeers, I think that this is a fun story. 

I do recommend it on audio as well. I went back and forth between the audio and physical book. But in the end I actually ended up preferring the audio book. I think the way that this book is structured, it works really well on audio. And audible actually has a couple of versions of this book and I think they might actually have like a full cast production as well. 

But this isn't like a groundbreaking classic for me or anything along those lines. But I'm really glad that I did read it. So fun story, the week after I read this book I was reading stick together which I talked about in my last wrap-up and they actually made a three musketeers of reference in there. 

And I was like hey, I actually understand what this reference means. So that's just like one of the reasons why I like doing these little classic challenges because I know that these books are referenced a lot in other literature, pop culture, etc, etc. And just even having the base knowledge of what happens in the story to be able to recognize references makes me happy. 

So yeah, 3 out of 5 stars. Liked it, didn't love it. So yeah, leave a comment down below letting me know what you guys thought of the three musketeers. I saw a lot of you guys giving this one like a 4 star rating and things like that. 

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