The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
When young d’Artagnan travels to Paris to join the ranks of the Musketeers, he soon finds himself challenged to three duels with Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. However, the foursome is abruptly attacked by the evil Cardinal Richelieu’s guards, and d’Artagnan fights alongside them, proving his skills with a sword and his honour. The three Musketeers enfold d’Artagnan into their ranks, and what follows is a swashbuckling tale full of intrigue, friendship, and revenge.
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The Three Musketeers is one of my favourite “classic” stories yet up until this point I’d never actually read the book. But I’ve made it my goal to get more into classic french literature (starting last summer with Victor Hugo) and Alexandre Dumas is always toted as a master of words and what better story of his to start with than one that I already love? This book was highly enjoyable. It was 600 pages and felt so much shorter as this book just flew by with fast paced dialogue and non-stop action. It’s a mix between an adventure novel and a historical romance. The humour in the dialogue, the witty banter, and the action sequences are unmatched. I was pleasantly surprised at how exciting and funny this book was. I admit to being slightly worried that it wouldn’t live up to my love for the BBC The Musketeers TV adaptation (which is what made me love the Musketeers) but it was brilliant. If you’re into the classics, I highly recommend this one!
We start off with d’Artagnan setting off on his trip to Paris after saying goodbye to his family, he has a letter of recommendation to join Treville’s Musketeers in his pocket. He’s a prideful young man and obviously finds himself in a few tiffs on his way because I guess that’s what prideful young men of the time do? This leads to his letter being stolen and his grudge against the letter stealer begins, lasting throughout the whole book. Little known to us at the time, this thief is Rochefort who works for the Cardinal. As d’Artagnan makes it to Paris, he once again finds himself much too prideful for his own good and challenges all three of our main Musketeers to a duel. As d’Artagnan meets the first of his adversaries, Athos, and sees Athos’ second is the man he’s supposed to fight next, he realizes his error in judgement and that these three are friends and can easily gang up on him. Before much can be done about it, they are set upon by the Cardinals men and must fight to defend each other and themselves. Thus sparks a lifelong friendship and an adventure to tell through the ages.
My absolute favourite part of this book was the dialogue and how well it displayed the relationships between characters. Right from the start we see the ego on d’Artagnan just in the way he speaks to those he feels have offended him. We see the humour in the three Musketeers discussing this young pup that has challenged them all to duels on the same day. We laugh as d’Artagnan comes to this realization. We gasp when the Cardinal so villainously reveals his evil plots. We sigh as d’Artagnan speaks of his love for Constance, we giggle at Aramis’ slightly less than ideal devotion to his religion and Porthos’ sneaky attempts to marry rich, and we hurt as we hear the Athos tell his heartbreaking story of love and betrayal. How an author can express so much just through a book driven mainly by witty dialogue, endless banter, and action scenes is amazing. I felt what these characters felt. I felt as if I really knew them even though we barely had internal monologue nor first person narrative, Dumas just did such a great job of expressing emotion through words. I spent a majority of this novel laughing out loud because it was endlessly entertaining.
The only thing that I didn’t enjoy as much about this book as I have of some of the film/tv show adaptations was d’Artagnan’s characterization. He’s pretty shallow in the book and seems to care more for himself and his future with the Musketeers than anything else even his friends’ well-being. The way he can so easily toss a relationship or emotions aside to move on so quickly through friends and lovers felt very shallow when we’re used to seeing this character as such a noble man in every adaptation. That was my only complaint, this book was amazing and now I can’t wait to read Dumas’ other works!
If you enjoy classics, this is definitely a must read. It’s a classic that doesn’t read like a classic. It’s not full of long-winded inner dialogue or pages of descriptions on the setting nor background information that takes pages to discuss. It’s not boring, it’s packed with excitement, duels, love affairs, evil plots, melodrama, humour, misunderstandings and so much more. I give it a good 4 out of 5 stars. I would definitely read this again.