Yuffie's Book Reviews

The Three Musketeers - by Alexandre Dumas

--Published Book--

Hi. La. Ri. Ous. I cannot begin to explain how many times I burst out laughing while reading this book! These guys are the three stooges (well, four stooges) with rapiers. Dumas has the greatest sense of humor I've seen in a published book. You can easily tell he doesn't take his characters seriously.

But first let me give a short summary: The Three Musketeers is about this 18-year-old dude name D'artagnan who sets off into the world on his own. On the recommendation of his father, he goes to Paris to find Monsieur de Treville, captain of the king's musketeers, and ask to enlist as a musketeer. On the way, his letter of recommendation from his father gets stolen by some dude. Here's when things get freaking funny.

So D'artagnan's dad gave him this really old, ugly-yellow, pathetic horse, but the dad gave this page-long monologue of how D'artagnan should take care of this horse and treat it as he would family and tend to it and whatever. 20 pages later, D'artagnan needs money, so he sells the horse. Dumas glosses over this in one sentence. The effect was so blunt and funny!

Eventually, he makes it to the place where all the musketeers hangs out. He accidently gets in a fight with one of them, (and apparently in this century in France, everyone fought to the death over everything). So D'artagnan and the musketeer set a time and place the next day to fight to the death. D'artagnan moves on, and two minutes later, sees the dude who stole his letter of recommendation. So he starts screaming and running after him to kill him, but he bumps into another musketeer. And they set a fight to the death. And this happens a third time with a third musketeer. LOL see where this is going?

The next day, D'artagnan arrives at the spot where he's supposed to have his first duel. The guy shows up with two of his friends . . . and you guessed it . . . it's the two other musketeers he's supposed to fight. They all freak out and are like "I'M SUPPOSED TO FIGHT HIM TOO WTF."

Well, eventually they get in a fight with the police, who are the musketeers' mortal enemies. D'artagnan proves to be really badass with a sword, and he kicks butt. The king is impressed (LOL such a troll king. "Hey, I just stabbed one of your police to death." "Wow, impressive! Here's 40 crowns! *showers the musketeers with money*"). Now that D'artagnan is super rich, his new musketeer friends tell him to find a lackey. So they find some random dude off the street and end up blowing all the money on food in a couple days. So then they go mooching off their friends for food. xD

Seriously, these musketeers are morons. The majority of the book continues on with them making really stupid decisions. They're portrayed in today's pop culture as being valiant and heroic--nope. They're complete idiots. I love it!

So the story and the characters are fantastic! Each musketeer's personality is so distinct from one another, and they complement each other very well. Porthos is this vain, two-faced, superficial nuthead. Athos is the old, serious, scary, regal lord. Aramis keeps telling everyone he's going to join the clergy, but secretly he loves being a musketeer. D'artagnan is the most hot-headed guy you will ever meet. And each of them have lackeys (servants), whose personalities are just as well-fleshed-out as their masters.

The writing has its good and bad parts. The dialogue is where Dumas shines. He was a playwright, so this is expected. The dialgoue is phenomenal! It does take up a huge majority of the book, as if this was a script-turned-novel. I think that's pretty cool, even though it does have its limitations.

The narration was a little weak. The description of surroundings was thin or non-existent. Some parts of the narration blatantly broke the 4th wall, and Dumas actually EXPLAINED himself as he was writing. For example, there was a big war going on, and he gave several pages of what happened in the war (I actually just skipped that scene because it read like a history book and I didn't have time for that), and then he wrote a line explaining why he was telling us about all this history. I wanted to slap him with a wet fish. But luckily those lines are far and few (maybe just three or four in the whole book?) so I could forgive them, especially since everything else was so awesome.

Of course, as this was written in the 1800s and translated from French, you can't expect the writing to be tear-jerkingly beautiful. But it was surprisingly a very easy read, and I was able to get immersed in it. It does take a few pages to get used to the language, but it's really not as terrifying as you'd think!

The comraderie of the three musketeers (and D'artagnan) was fantastic and beautiful and the ultimate bromance. Sometimes D'artagnan would completely forsake them in one of his hot-headed tirades, which was hilariously sad/stupid. But ultimately, they're best friends till the end, and we can see that.

The only thing I wished could have been done differently was the ending. The whole book was wacky and silly and funny, and then the ending is this giant pool of misery. I got whiplash from the sudden, random change in tone.

So overall, this book is FANTASTIC, and everyone needs to read this before they die. Hands down, my favorite book of all time.

5/5 stars