The Three Muskateers by Alexandre Dumas

The Three Muskateers by Alexandre Dumas

My rating: 1 of 5 stars


I don't usually blast the classics, but I have to make an exception for this one. I had NO idea The Three Muskateers was a rendition of Disney characters meeting The Three Stooges, with a little Adam Sandler thrown in for heart. Forget all about basic writing procedures like character or basic logical plot development. Those things do not exist here. Dumas never uses one or two words when 347 will do instead, so there's heavy doses of nonsense interspersed with lots and lots of behavior that makes absolutely no sense. Even taking into consideration that times were different when this was published, and the novel takes place in another country, there's no accounting for the outright stupidity of the people and their behavior. Besides all this, why does no one ever point out that Dumas simply couldn't count to four? There were not Three Muskateers by the end of the book; there were four. Further, the book itself was more about that fourth guy than it was about the other threesome. (This is not a spoiler, by the way. It is revealed at the beginning of the novel that we're going to be dealing with four dimwitted men, not three.)

I thought maybe there was a benefit to reading this novel just for the historical significance. Wrong again. Absolutely nothing redeems this book. What's worse is that it's part of a trilogy, and guess who bought the whole set! Yep, that would be me. I can't wait to see what happens 20 years after the first one ends.... NOT!!! :)



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