The Three Musketeers in Readers Sharing Reviews

May 21, 2007 Bill Kerwin rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: historical-fiction

This is not the most profound of novels, but it may be the most compelling. Many of its sequences--the Diamond Studs, Milady's seduction of Felton, the attempt of D'Artagnan and The Three to rescue Constance--move with remarkable rapidity. More notable than these, however, is the entire exposition, something many novelists have found to be a thankless chore, if not a stumbling block. It occupies a full sixty pages, 10% of the book, and, although it covers much ground--the introduction of our her ...more

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Sep 19, 2008 Werner rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: books-i-own, classics, historical-fiction

Note, March 5, 2025: I edited one sentence just now, to clarify the intended meaning.

Note: I read this in a different edition than the above, a 1952 printing by World Publishing Co. with a serviceable four-page introduction by a Thomas Layman. It gives no information on the date or provenance of its translation.

Until this month, my acquaintance with Dumas' classic, like most people's, came strictly from our popular culture (where the musketeer motif appears everywhere from movies to candy bars!) Note, March 5, 2025: I edited one sentence just now, to clarify the intended meaning.

Note: I read this in a different edition than the above, a 1952 printing by World Publishing Co. with a serviceable four-page introduction by a Thomas Layman. It gives no information on the date or provenance of its translation.

Until this month, my acquaintance with Dumas' classic, like most people's, came strictly from our popular culture (where the musketeer motif appears everywhere from movies to candy bars!) --principally from movie adaptations of this novel and spin-offs from it. Since I've been an avid fan of these, I approached this novel with pretty high expectations. Unfortunately, it proved to be a disappointment; my rating wasn't nearly as high as I expected it to be (nor as high as those of virtually any of my Goodreads friends who've rated it); and if I could give half stars, it would slip down to two and a half. Part of the disappointment no doubt stems from the inaccurate expectations formed by the movies, and part from qualities inherent in the book itself.

The Gascon swordsman D'Artagnan apparently was a real person, though according to Layman his published Memoirs, with which Dumas was familiar, were actually written by one Courtils de Sandras. "Athos," "Porthos" and "Aramis" appear there as well, though Dumas believed (and states in the novel) that these were aliases disguising their real names. Some other characters and situations come from this source as well, though others derive from other sources or from pure imagination (Buckingham's romantic infatuation with King Louis' wife is in the latter category). The novel's rivalry between the king's musketeers and the cardinal's guards is drawn from the Memoirs; but the movies sharpen it and make it into a moral/ideological struggle between the minions of an evil prelate who's trying to seize power for selfish purposes vs. the devoted servants of a king who are supposedly fighting for a vaguely-defined nobler set of social goals. I always knew this couldn't have been a historically accurate picture; Richelieu had all the real power as it was, with no reason to want more nor to be dissatisfied with his puppet king, and his policies were aimed singlemindedly at strengthening the French state, not at his own interests personally. But it's a premise that did make for exciting and dramatic conflicts, and I always supposed it came from Dumas. In the Memoirs and the novel, however, the plot is much more grounded in reality; the two swaggering groups of sword-boys don't have policy differences as such, just a petty team rivalry and animosity like that between two rival high schools (except that these bunches of juveniles have swords and lethal combat training). So the novel doesn't have a broad social good vs. social evil framework.

Related to the above, the four main characters are much less heroic moral exemplars in the book than in the movie versions (where they're quite whitewashed), and significantly less likeable --though, to be fair, they also have their good qualities. In the book, the character Constance is married (though her husband is a contemptible louse); but that doesn't stop D'Artagnan from amorously pursuing her. While he's supposedly deeply "in love" with her, however, he's also bedding two other women, one whose favors he gets by a trick he admits was "unworthy of a gentleman," and the other whose love for him he shabbily exploits to deliberately use her as a tool. (Porthos, not to be outdone, is a gigolo with an unattractive mistress whom he strings along just to wheedle sums of her husband's money out of her from time to time.) Their attitude (and Dumas') towards their servants stinks. Athos affects a self-imposed silence on himself and his servant, so that they communicate only by hand signs; but if the young man happens to misunderstand the master's wishes (which he can't verbally ask about!), Athos beats him. When he can't afford to pay his "lackey" anymore, D'Artagnan, on the advice of his buddies, beats up the unfortunate servant and forbids him to quit; this supposedly wins him the impressed underling's undying loyalty. (As you may have guessed, Dumas himself never worked as a servant. :-( ) Novelist Norah Lofts once has a character say that people reveal much of their character by how they treat helpless animals. When the young man is about to set out for Paris, D'Artagnan's father gifts him with an old and faithful (though unattractive) horse, and charges him never to sell the animal, but to let it retire in peace to pasture. As soon as he hits town, practically his first act is to sell the poor beast and pocket the cash. He also avows his willingness, at one point when he's in a hurry to get somewhere, to ride a horse or two to death or maiming, since he has the money to replace them. (I hoped one would give him a good hard kick in a tender part of his anatomy, but alas, it didn't happen. :-( )

Overall, the novel has a number of other features that weaken it as compared to the film tradition. It's much less compact in time, spanning the years 1625-1628, with a 19th-century style epilogue telling us the subsequent fates of the characters. (Though in Dumas' hands, 1626 apparently just vanishes down the memory hole in a chronological slip; and after Buckingham's assassination --that's a "spoiler" only for people who slept through British history class!-- on Aug. 23, 1628, the author somehow flips the calendar of subsequent events back to Aug. 15.) The plot is a bit jerry-built, with the intrigue and danger involving the recovery of the queen's diamond studs given to Buckingham occupying only the first part of it. Much of the last part revolves around the historical siege of La Rochelle, Buckingham's assassination (in which Milady De Winter is involved, in Dumas' version), and Milady's sinister schemes for personal vengeance against our hero. In between, we have a fair amount of filler involving the reunion of the friends and their efforts to pay for equipping themselves properly for the La Rochelle campaign. (Some of this is intended to be comic relief, and some of it actually is, though it's not always as comic as Dumas thought it.) There are some cases of wildly unlikely coincidence or of unlikely knowledge on a character's part. Dumas doesn't develop the religious theme that could have been built around Aramis' struggle between his felt call to the priesthood and his more secular or carnal impulses (probably because the author himself didn't have the degree of spiritual interest or insight needed to do that). And for readers who put a premium on sword-fighting action, that motif is much less prominent here than it typically is in the movies. Rebecca De Mornay's Milady in the Disney movie is a much more round and nuanced character than the one here. (Though Dumas' Richelieu is a much more believable and realistic approximation of the real one than the Disney version's caricature; and Rochefort is much less a consummate villain here than he's drawn in the movies.) And the characters' readiness to engage in duels to the death over nothing, or over minor slights to their "honor" (usually confused with overbearing, chip-on-the-shoulder pride) gets old quickly.

On the plus side --and it has one, since I finished the book and gave it three stars!-- the last part of the novel (more so than the first) is a tense, gripping page-turner. Dumas' has a dry wit at times that can be appealing. His prose reads well; even though it can have some long sentences and complex sentence structure, and big words, it isn't as daunting as it looks, and could usually be understood easily enough by most intelligent modern readers if they'd give it a chance. (The exceptions are French terminology in several places --and, in this translation, occasional untranslated French words apparently retained for flavor-- but I was able to simply read around these, or deduce an approximated meaning from context.) For anyone who's seen the movies, comparing the two art forms can be fascinating (there are a number of details that are paralleled in the Disney version especially). Some passages are genuinely moving; and Milady's character, like a cobra in a glass case, fascinates even while it repels. (As the title character of the old Get Smart TV series might have remarked, "If only she'd used her talents for niceness instead of evil!")

In summary, this was, for me, a read that fell short of expectations; I'll always prefer the movie versions, and won't be searching out much of the author's other work (though I still want to read The Count of Monte Cristo). But it has an undeniable historical interest, and isn't without its merits; and others have liked it better than I did --you might, as well! ...more

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Oct 13, 2009 Mike (the Paladin) rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: classics

Everyone is familiar with the first half of this book as that is the part (or some version of it) that usually makes the movies. The rest of the book being much darker and sadder (view spoiler) Go ahead see the movies, just don't confuse them with the literature. ...more

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May 19, 2013 Tracey rated it did not like it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio, 1-star, oh-that-s-why-i-never-read-this, the-movie-was-better

My rating for this surprised me, and I imagine it might be a surprise to others. One star?? A swashbuckling adventure novel beloved for a couple of centuries? Yeah, well.

I've tried to read this before. It had "me" written all over it: aforementioned buckling of swashes, romance and derring-do and so forth. But I never penetrated very far. There was a tone – perhaps to the particular translation I tried, perhaps to the work itself – that just put me off, exemplified by the instance of D'Artagnan My rating for this surprised me, and I imagine it might be a surprise to others. One star?? A swashbuckling adventure novel beloved for a couple of centuries? Yeah, well.

I've tried to read this before. It had "me" written all over it: aforementioned buckling of swashes, romance and derring-do and so forth. But I never penetrated very far. There was a tone – perhaps to the particular translation I tried, perhaps to the work itself – that just put me off, exemplified by the instance of D'Artagnan selling the yellow horse after his father impressed upon him how he must never do so, and he promised faithfully that he would not. It was such a dishonorable, dishonest, ugly thing to do, in a book I had expected to be dripping with honor – and it was just the beginning.

Last year I finally went with the audiobook, on the theory that classics that have not held a huge amount of interest for me go down better read aloud. I hold the reader, John Lee, responsible for my being able to finish it with as much tolerance as I did; if I’d been just reading words on a page I think it would have ended up in the trash by page 200. I hated this. I truly, deeply hated this. I’ve seen at least a couple of movie versions; I’ve enjoyed them, somewhat, as frothy swashbucklers, of course. I always expected the book to be better, though.

One of my two Goodreads comments on the book was:
"These people are all horrible - honorless, slutty morons. And this is a classic, beloved by schoolboys for - what, over 200 years? God help us."

And that’s my biggest problem with the book. Perhaps it was supposed to be ironic, some kind of commentary on honor and courage and standards and morality through the depiction of noble swordsmen who were actually men you wouldn’t trust alone with a coin or a woman. I don’t remember ever coming across that take on it, though.

Athos, Porthos, Aramis, D'Artagnan. These are the heroes I wanted to read about. The brave and loyal soldiers, the champions of right and defenders of womanhood and of France … I have no idea where my ideas came from – the movies, perhaps? What I found as I listened to the book was that Athos was a hypocritical prig, Aramis was a hypocritical pseudo-religious, Porthos was a gluttonous gambling dandy, and D'Artagnan a cocky young jackass. They were all four drunkards, given any opportunity; they were all womanizers, cuckolding widely and wildly, dropping whatever girl they had been bedding to move on without a pause or juggling as many as possible simultaneously. And the much-vaunted all-for-one loyalty? I didn't see it. Every single one of them was as likely to throw his buddies under the 18th century equivalent of a bus as to support them, or to leave them in assorted lurches. Then get a good laugh out of it. And the interactions between these four and the man-servants they could barely afford but NEEDED made The Comedy of Errors seem like a shining illustration of workplace harmony. It was depressing.

D'Artagnan in particular was a letdown. The whole situation of swiving the maid in the room adjacent to her mistress, and vice versa – I wanted to throttle him. A lot. For one thing – seriously? They've let prepubescent boys read this for centuries? Oh, that’s just awesome. So, buckling of swashes, romance and derring-do and so forth? The swashes were askew at best; the romance was not the way Anne Shirley defines it (nor me), the doing wasn’t so derring. I only made it through the whole thing because it was an audiobook with a good narrator, and because I gritted my teeth in determination to see it all the way through. It was a deep disappointment, and I hated it.

My other Goodreads comment:
“Chapter 67: Conclusion
Oh, thank God.” ...more

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Apr 19, 2011 Xdyj rated it really liked it

A entertaining story with a good sense of humor and lots of memorable (anti)heroes.

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Sep 02, 2008 Jen rated it it was ok

Shelves: 2010, dailylit

Technically, two stars means that it's an okay book. This is an okay book. The Count of Monte Cristo was by far a more enjoyable read. I mostly found myself reading this book because I felt like I had to finish it after I started it. ...more

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