The Three Musketeers is a novel about the adventures of four musketeers in 17th century France. Muskets are only used once by the musketeers. Swords and occasionally pistols are the weapon of choice. The story line consists of conspiracies, daring escapes, duels, and lots of hard living. The horses have the hardest lives as they are frequently left for dead on the journeys.

The novel is the first of a trilogy though I doubt that was intended during its writing. The second definitely feels like a Hollywood sequel capitalizing on the success of the original. It is still a very good story with high tension moments.

All the novels were published as serials. They read very differently from the serialized work of Dickens. The latter two novels have climaxes in odd spots and have self-contained stories within them. Dumas seems to have had difficulty ending the third. English editions of it are usually broken up into three volumes. The entire trilogy in my collection is 3,464 pages. That's a lot of sword fights.

Dumas does a great job creating evil characters. I have rarely seen the lust for vengeance portrayed as well. He seems to have forgotten his revenge-driven character in the third book, but I didn't mind as it kept it from being too formulaic. My primary complaints are two-fold. First, the shaming of the primary hero, d'Artagnan, by the king near the end of the last novel did not fit with the larger than life character that Dumas had created. Second, in the second and third books the musketeers begin to become caricatures of themselves.

A great side benefit of working through this trilogy is a greater understanding of French history during this time period (and to a lesser extent, English history). My editions had ample backnotes on all the historical characters and events. I have already come across a few references in my reading that I would have not appreciated before.

The descriptions of the French court and its frivolity, excess, and endless intrigues were enough to make me think that perhaps the French Revolution and the Reign of Terror weren't such bad ideas after all. Maybe I should read A Tale of Two Cities again or perhaps something like Scaramouche.