Ooooh that movie lied to me!

This should have been titled "In Which Everything Goes Kaput for our Fine Heroes". This was quite the apocalypse of the musketeers. If you're a big fan of The Three Musketeers, I don't recommend reading this rather long account of doom and despair. Our fine fellows make some very bad decisions, especially Aramis (shame on you, man! Shaaaame!) which *SPOILER* leads to ALL of their deaths! I was really, really not expecting that, and, d'Artagnan aside, THEY DIE REALLY STUPID DEATHS. Athos' death is probably the saddest death I have ever read, aside from a few characters in Dickens' The Old Curiousity Shop. I cried for a long time. This book is concentrated pain, and I do not recommend reading it.

An exciting and fun book! This book is a great read even if you haven't read the other books in this series. Though if you are reading this book because you loved the movie The Man in the Iron Mask, I have to warn you that the movie is very different from the book. For example, the King was not a big villain in the book who is a huge threat. So the King being replaced by his brother feels less like replacing a tyrant with a kind and humble king and more like replacing an average king with a puppet king controlled by the Musketeers. This is made even worse by

Spoiler

Aramis telling Phillippe, that his brother, the King knew about him and supported his imprisonment, even though the King didn't even know he had a brother.

Though overall it was a great read; I liked all of the characters, the plot was interesting, and it had a lot of funny moments sprinkled into the action and drama.

Wow. This book took me 3 months to read. Yikes.

This is a terrible thing to say, but I think I liked the movie better (obviously Leonardo played a role in the weighing of the movie over the book). I was surprised how small a role the "man in the iron mask" actually played in this book. There were definitely some exciting fight scenes and such, but for the most part, it felt very long and drawn out.