This is the first novel in Turtledove's American Empire series, which picks up where his last series, The Great War leaves off. Turtledove writes a genre known as alternate history. These series of novels were crafted on the presumption that the Confederacy won the Civil War and achieved independence from the United States. They fought again twenty years later in the Second Mexican War (How Few Remain) and again in the World War I period. The U.S. aligned itself with Germany while the Confederacy aligned itself with England and France. The U.S. was finally able to defeat the Confederacy this go-round. Blood & Iron picks up following the end of the war. In the Confederate States, they are plagued by having to pay reparations to the U.S. causing tremendous inflation. Enter Jake Featherston, who we know from the previous series of novels. Convinced that the aristocracy present in the Confederate War Department is largely to blame for losing the war as well as his own inability to advance in the military despite a great record, he forms the Freedom Party. The tactics of the Freedom Party, as well as Featherston's own speeches are eerily reminiscent of the Nazi Party. At one point he even talks about "giving the gas" to blacks on whom he also lays a great deal of the blame for the lost war. Their Socialist uprising in the middle of the fighting hurt the Confederacy a great deal. Meanwhile, in the U.S., winning the war is not enough to secure a third term as President for Teddy Roosevelt. He is unseated by the Socialist Upton Sinclair as former soldiers react to coming home and finding themselves at the mercy of capitalist factory owners. The main characters are people known from the previous series. If you haven't read it, chances are you will be lost if you pick up this book and try to read it. As always, he has a great deal of them. However, he does not promise that all of them will survive and I believe that he has started out with so many because of this. It can be confusing at times because he jumps around so much. Each chapter contains some vignettes about certain characters and it can be hard to follow. I also found it hard figuring out how much time had passed in certain instances. Some of the characters we've known seem to have nothing to do here. They are just living their lives and not doing anything spectacular. People who seemed interesting during the war seem somewhat dull now. However, my general feeling is that Turtledove is building up towards the Second World War. Most of his characters talk about the Confederacy and the U.S. fighting once again. The novel didn't really grab me until about the last one hundred pages. Before that, I found it hard to plow through. In this last bit, Turtledove seems to get his groove and many characters become interesting again. In particular, I liked how he contrasted two Canadian farmers. Lucien Galtier is in the new Republic of Quebec. The war benefitted him and he is living a good life now. Arthur McGregor lives out in Manitoba and is embittered at the U.S. for the execution of his son who may or may not have been involved in a bombing back during the war. His bitterness is focused on punishing the U.S. and the soldiers who are occupying Canada. His bitterness allows him to justify the killing of innocents to "punish" the U.S. for its wrongdoings. Lucien reading about McGregor and lamenting about how his life could have been so different is a really profound part of this story. If you are already reading the series, this novel is good because of what it is building up to. However, if you haven't read the series, you will be confused. I thinkThe Great War novels were much better, but I am excited as to what this novel is leading up to.
The last and final installment in the Kent Family Chronicles was released in 1980 - four years beyond the original target date of ending the family's adventures. It is also far short of the original goal of following the descendants of Philip Kent all the way through to the Bicentennial. I have to believe, after having read all of the books in such a short span of time, that Jakes himself had grown tired of the characters. Too often, the same storylines were carried through from book to book; from character to character. It almost seemed at times as if he were just transplanting the same scenarios to different times in history. The Americans, unfortunately, is no different. Although I found the book to be a great read, I was frustrated at way too many times feeling like I'd read it all before. A trademark of Jakes' books seems to be a person who holds a grudge against the protagonist for little or no reason and spends a good deal of time and trouble trying to avenge himself. In this novel we see that not once, but twice - with two different characters. The novel takes place in the latter half of the nineteenth century. Gideon Kent is leading the rich man's life in Boston along with his wife Julia (his cousin's ex-wife). Throughout the story, Gideon is continually troubled by what he sees as the indifference of his and Julia's children to the legacy left to the family by Philip Kent.Gideon's daughter Eleanor is an actress at a time when that was synonymous with being a prostitute. She is married to Leo Goldman and suffers a great deal of turmoil, culminating in a fantastic tale of survival during the infamous Johnstown Flood. Some of the demons are in her own mind, put there by the atrocities she suffered in the previous novel and has never confessed to anyone. Others are there as a result of the anti-semitism that she and her husband experience. Will Kent's journey was probably the most in-depth in this novel. I don't know if the fact that it is given the most attention is what makes it the most interesting, but the historical background of how people lived in tenements while the rich partied on the backs of people who were sick and dying really gripped me. Will has decided to become a doctor, which was not a revered profession at the time. Society doctors spent most of their time treating women's fainting spells and making a fortune doing it. However, they practiced little real medicine. The time he spends in the tenements begins to open his eyes, and he is torn between working with people who will benefit the most from his knowledge, and becoming successful the way his step-brother defines success: lots and lots of money. Carter Kent leaves behind a Harvard education to try to find his own way out west. For a long time, he simply wanders aimlessly until his charming personality managed to get him ingratiated with the Democratic Party Boss in San Francisco. I found the historical background here interesting - especially in light of the 2000 Presidential election. It seems like a hundred years ago, these bosses consistently manipulated election to the desired - and paid for - outcome. The novel hints at Carter's own rise in the party to Washington politics. In fact, most of the history presented in The Americans made me think that many of the problems we face now in this country have plagued us for almost as long as the country has existed. In some ways, that made me sad. When I thought of it a bit more, I felt reassured that if we'd survived these conditions for the last hundred years, we'd survive it a while longer. Where the novel ends is at Gideon's death. We have no idea of what becomes of the Kent family in the 20th Century. We don't know what happens with Carter's political career; who will run the family newspaper and publishing business, or a whole host of other loose ends. One thing I disliked in the last novel was how certain things we had read were changed to suit the story Jakes developed, and he did the same here. Once again, the abuse Will was subjected to at the hands of his mentally ill mother seemed to become worse when written about now, over what was written during the time this was happening. Still, reading about Will's adventures out in Montana with Theodore Roosevelt, and the historical background of the New York City tenements made up for the shortcomings I felt were in the characters. This is a good ending to the series, and if the novels are not read so close together, there is a deeper appreciation for the story.
This novel is the second in Jakes' Civil War trilogy. Love and War picks up the lives of the Main and Hazard families right where North and South left off. The Mains are rice planters in South Carolina. The Hazards are steel manufacturers in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. The Civil War is just beginning. Brett Main has just married Billy Hazard. The families are linked not just by their marriage, but by the strong friendship forged between Orry Main and George Hazard while attending West Point. This bond transcends even the worst moments of the War as the families reach out and help one another on numerous occasions. In the Afterword, Jakes compares his writing of this novel to Gone With the Wind. He admits to loving the story, but laments the fact that the slaves are depicted as content to be slaves, and also with comic relief - social values which really don't hold up any longer. Even the war is depicted without too much blood and guts, mostly referred to on cue cards. The only true impact of suffering is the depot scene showing a seemingly endless sea of wounded men. This novel shows that war is pure hell. Particularly notable is the change in Charles Main through the book as what he witnesses and experiences changes him. The evolution is not swift or abrupt, but very gradual. It make it totally believable. The battlefields are described in great detail giving the reader the feeling that they are experiencing it right along with the characters. Everything in Jakes' writing rings so true that I felt as if I were reading a biography of these two families. Instead of focusing on the notable parts of the War, such as the battle at Gettysburg, Jakes takes us to Carolina and Liverpool shipyards, Libby Prison, Confederate encampments, and the politicking in both Washington D.C. and Richmond, VA. This gives the novel more depth than focusing just on the more infamous parts of the War. Neither side is exempt from special interests or those who seek to profit on the blood of others. Both families have people who are up to no good. In the case of Ashton Main - Brett and Orry's sister - she is inherently evil here. While trying to help her husband rise politically in Confederate circles, she joins with a group at first attempting to take control of the government. In the process she almost destroys Orry's marriage and his good name, is responsible for the drowning of her nephew, and still carries a great deal of anger at being rejected by Billy Hazard in favor of her sister. Of course no Jakes novel would be complete without the evil man harboring a grudge due to some slight years ago. In here it is Elkanah Bent. Bent seems to spend the majority of the novel scheming at how to get back at the two families, all the while managing to mess up every chance he has in his own life. Much is made of his parentage here, but though it is hinted at, it is never revealed. It is one bit of frustration I really would have like to have been resolved. In this novel, slavery is not depicted as a happy existence. As the war presses on, many of the slaves at the Mains' plantation run off. Orry's wife Madeline goes to great lengths to try and make it better for them, even beginning a school. Her belief is that they will be freed and need their education. This is a believable way to show the feelings of loyalty some of the slaves - and freedmen who live at the plantation - have for the family. In the North, Brett works with black children at an orphanage started by George's wife, Constance. Having the opportunity to interact outside of the plantation with the black children and adults causes Brett to rethink her own beliefs she has had all her life. It also gives her a good direction and sense of purpose, rather than sitting in a house through the whole novel worried about her husband. The families are not exempt from tragedy. Several lives are lost. There is nothing pretty about the four and a half years contained in the novel. Jakes has gone to great lengths to write a well-researched and non-glamorous view of this terrible war. If you've never read it, it's definitely worth a look.
In this novel, Harry Turtledove wraps up his alternate-history saga of the first World War. My one piece of advice here is to use the map at the front of the novel, and use it often. I did, if for nothing else than to keep track of where everyone was. The premise of the series is that the Confederacy won its bid for freedom during the Civil War, and for the third time in fifty years, they go head-to-head with the United States. This time is different: the United States has as its ally the powerful German and Austrian armies. The Confederacy is aligned with Canada, Great Britain, France and Russia (with the Japanese thrown in for a good skirmish every now and again). After finishing the previous novel, The Great War: Walk in Hell, which felt like I was sitting through extra innings at a zero-zero baseball game, it was refreshing to finally see some movement in the war effort. Just who begins making the breakthroughs? Well, I won't spoil it for you. Throughout the three novels in this series, Turtledove has woven a great selection of characters from all sides of the war. To really know them, a reader should start with the first novel of the series, or it will seem like they are not given depth here; the depth comes from the history we have of their involvement in the war over the last three years. Turtledove is not above sacrificing his characters - not everyone he began following in the first novel The Great War: American Front will survive. It would be unrealistic in many ways to expect this, yet I had become so attached to certain ones that I teared up at the news of their death - and was flooded with relief when one such interesting character manages to cheat death. Turtledove describes with great detail the advent of the modern war machines. Tanks, or "barrels" as they are called here come to be a real deciding factor in who is victorious. Yet my favorite part was the description of the flying aces in their machines. The war evolves greatly during the novels - the flying aces remark on it often. And it is interesting to see how fast it has all changed and who has managed to capitalize on it the best. The Canadians were starkly contrasted with each other as well. Though none were happy at the beginning of the war with the United States' invasion, the citizens of the eastern province of Quebec have a much different reaction than the residents of centrally-located Manitoba. Hate has also come full circle here as we see what happens when a very intelligent man loses a child and lashes out at the occupiers. We also see the hate coming full circle in other places. Though the United States was very happy to help arm the Socialist Negroes for their uprising in the Confederacy and create havoc, they are not welcoming to the black population at all. Factory workers who went off to fight in the South watched their jobs be taken over by former field hands and eventually see these same men who were shooting at them in the Red uprising handed a gun and a commission by their own Confederate government. How will the aristocracy who once flourished on the backs of the Negroes react? How will the disenfranchised white soldier returning from war react? If there's one fault to the novels it's just how much they do jump around. For a casual reader, it's easy to get lost and not be able to follow all of the stories and remember who is doing what and where. On the other hand, I enjoyed seeing so many different angles of the conflict. More than once, characters we have gotten to know in totally separate instances come together in The Great War: Breakthroughs on opposite sides. Who do I root for? I have come to like both people for different reasons. We also don't know what's happening in the rest of the world during this time. I felt at times as isolated from the European continent as the soldiers did; they did not seem to have much of an idea of what was going on over there at various times. We are given quick snippets of information at times when it seems crucial to the story. I suppose with as many fronts as Turtledove is following, anything more would've made it a lot more confusing. For the most part, Turtledove has kept his novels showing the war through the eyes of the common man, rather than pivotal historical figures. We have watched the Socialist Flora Hamburger rise from virtual obscurity to her own seat in the House of Representatives, but who has ever heard of this woman? With the notable exception of General Custer and President Theodore Roosevelt, we see just how much the war affect the average citizen; the average soldier. The novel ends with many of the stories not wrapped up. Yet this is the end of the series... Turtledove, I believe, has become as enamored of the characters he developed as we have. There is another series about to begin: American Empire. I am looking forward to seeing what happens next.
If you haven't yet had the pleasure of viewing the wonderful A&E miniseriesHoratio Hornblower, you are missing out on a real treat. The miniseries is based on the novels by C.S. Forester. It tells the tale of a young orphan who rises in rank in the British Navy. In this tale, we find Horatio on the frigate Indefatigable under Captain Pellew. They are soon confronted with Spain switching sides to the French and attacks on the British supply ships. With the crew on half-rations, Horatio must also study for the upcoming Lieutenant promotional exams. In order to secure more supplies, the Indefatgable travels to Iran with a member of the diplomatic corps. The small shore party is exposed to The Black Plague, forcing them to endure a three-week quarantine aboard another ship. Horatio is given command of that vessel. The title, The Fire Ships refers to the practice of setting a ship on fire and sending it off into another ship, or area where there are several ships in an attempt to destroy them. We see two fire ships in action during this story as Horatio proves that the true test of a sailor is not before an examination board, but at sea. Ioan Gruffudd portrays Horatio. Gruffudd is so believable as the character, I have had trouble viewing him in other roles since then. He conveys the anxiety of the situation as he commands the men beneath him. Horatio is a human being who sees his men as individuals and truly takes it to heart when one dies or has problems. The stress on his face during the examinations is believable as well. It honestly felt as if I was just glancing in on a bit of this man's life. Likewise, Robert Lindsay as Captain Pellew was a great piece of casting. He portrays the Captain strong, often seeming as if he shows no feeling to the crew. Yet the feeling is there and shows through, even when he must take a hard stance to keep his men in line. Since this is a period piece, the costuming is exception. I can't imagine having to wear such heavy clothes all the time, especially while standing in the hot sun. Everything appears authentic, from the differences in dress according to rank, to the diplomat's subtle changes in dress as the story goes on. The score which accompanies this episode is also terrific. This is a nice treat for what originally was a made-for-TV miniseries. Very few shows have scores which accompany the story as well as this one does, conveying the feeling of what is going on in the scenes at the time. Likewise, the cinematography is beautiful as we see the men in the ship draped across the background of an expansive ocean, a small Iranian port, and the port of Gibraltar. Watching the fires glow on the faces of the men in the evening, as well as the times when the sea is lit only by moonlight, are incredible moments. I cannot find anything wrong with this DVD and have enjoyed it numerous times. The only bonuses on this disc is an explanation of some of the nautical terms used by the sailors. I found this to be interesting, but you don't need to know them to follow the story.
In the entire American Bicentennial Series, this novel is one of the weakest. I don't know if Jakes was getting tired of writing it by now, or if it was just a harder time to write about, but two out of the three characters this novel focuses on do not read as well as the rest. This 682 page (in paperback) novel focuses on the impact of the railroads on this country. The main characters are Louis Kent, Michael Boyle, and Gideon Kent. Louis is the son of Amanda, who comes down the line of the Kent family not tainted by "Fletcher blood." Michael was Amanda's personal assistant and helped raise Louis after Amanda was killed. Gideon is the son of Jephtha Kent, who is a Methodist minister in New York City. Michael reads the best of all the characters. In previous novels, he left his employ with Louis after a dispute over profiteering during the Civil War. At this time, he is now working on the railroad as it attempts to connect the Atlantic with the Pacific. The goal of his line is to get to the 100th meridian before weather stops them. Along the way, he is sorting out his own principles. Following his service during the Civil War, he has developed a general disdain for fighting of any kind and loathes when he is forced into it. So many time he tries to just turn and walk away, but events seem to just draw him right back into fighting. Along the way he also meets up with Hannah Dorn, the daughter of a German immigrant who is trying to make a profit selling whiskey to the railroad workers. Hannah disproves of her father's money-making scheme and knows it could get him killed, along with her younger brother who is out working with him. Michael is drawn to her after she challenges all that he believes and feels. He is also trying to overcome thoughts of Louis' wife Julia. Michael all but raped her in the last novel, and feelings of guilt as well as desire still reside within him. I found Michael to be the best-honed character of the lot. Jakes seems to have gotten a real feel for him, and the work he does on the railroad. It is a fascinating read, especially when Michael meets up with an outlaw who turns out to be one of Jephtha's boys who was believed killed in the Civil War. His experiences during and after have caused Jeremiah to have a very callous attitude about killing people - and he has become very good at it as well. This also helps Michael examine who he is and who he wants to be. While the character of Michael was written so well, I didn't find the other two to be as believable. We are given hardly any information on Louis or any look into his life. He seems to be motivated by power and money, though what he needs more money for is beyond me. It cannot be to leave to his family, since his wife, Julia, has taken their son and left him after becoming involved in the woman's suffrage movement (fodder for the next novel). He becomes involved in the struggle between Jay Gould and "Commodore" Vanderbilt for the Erie Railroad. It is all a game to them, and I found the whole interaction that went on to not be interesting most of the time. I guess because I did not feel that I knew any of the characters involved enough to care about them, it wasn't that interesting to me. Gideon was perhaps the character I felt was the most wasted potential. He has a fortune waiting for him from the gold mines in California, yet he keeps his wife and child living in squalor in a shack near the railroad yards where he works in Jersey City. I could maybe understand a man being too proud to lean back on the money, but I would think that once a child came into the picture, he would think about what is best for her - providing a good education; having a decent home where he don't have to worry about keeping them warm; not having his wife have to take in sewing just so they can put food on the table. I just found it totally hard to believe that a man with these resources behind him would not fall back on them. This is especially true when he begins to get "Union Fever" as he sees the way workers are treated. He is especially affected after two incidents occur in the yard where he works. In one, a man is left with no legs, and unable to work. His pregnant wife hangs herself since she doesn't know how to cope with three kids to feed and a husband who is an invalid. In the other, Gideon is working one snowy night coupling railroad cars together when everyone else has called in sick. His best friend is killed during the night. Again, the family is left behind with five mouths to feed and no source of income. Gideon uses the fact that he is Louis' cousin to get money for the families, but almost gets himself killed in the process. It also ends up having a disastrous effect on Louis' schemes within the Erie board. I still found the whole situation hard to believe - that Gideon would continue to live in squalor while attempting to form a Union in the Railroad Yards. I could see if he drew only a small enough amount so that he was not lauding it over the workers he was trying to organize, but I really didn't see the point of his entire lifestyle. Jakes most definitely wanted to show the roots of the Union movement in this country, but choosing to do so through a man who was wealthy beyond belief but refused to touch the money fell short. Perhaps having Michael be the Unionizer would have read better, but we'll never know. I can only recommend this book in that you have to read it to complete the series. The character of Michael is a good read, but much of the rest of the story here left me wanting.
If you've only seen the mini-series by the same name, you're missing out on quite a lot. There is more of everything in John Jakes' novel North And South: more characters, more intrigue, more story, more history. In studying American History in school, and the Civil War in particular, we are often given clinical reasons behind the war. I always found it hard to understand the climate of the times. Jakes translates it well in this novel. Beginning almost 20 years before the start of the Civil War, North And South tells us the story of two families: the Mains of South Carolina, and the Hazards of Pennsylvania. The Mains are rice planters who own slaves. Though not harsh slave-owners, they nevertheless treat their people as property. Clarissa and Tillet are the parents, Cooper, Orry, Ashton and Brett are their offspring. Cooper is the eldest son, but he frequently clashes with his father, especially on the subject of slavery. Instead of managing the family's rice plantation, Mont Royal, he begins his own very successful shipping company in Charleston. Orry wanted a career as a soldier. He attends West Point after Cooper turns down the appointment to reach his dream. Fate dictates that he ends up managingMont Royal - a consuming task especially after he fires the overseer. He has qualms about the slavery issue, but also knows how much they rely on the labor to have a successful crop each year. He also is realistic enough to be very nervous about how the slaves would act towards their former masters should they ever be freed. He is a loner, who's one true love is another man's wife. Ashton is power hungry politically. Having been cursed to be born a woman rather than a man, she manipulates men into doing her dirty work. She is powerfully jealous of her sister and anyone else who manages to have any good fortune and happiness. She marries James Huntoon, a rising star in the South's political situation, figuring this is how she will become powerful as well. Brett is the more practical sister. She takes over helping Orry manage the plantation after their father dies and their mother turns feeble. She asserts her independence, yet is much more a lady than her sister. She falls for Billy Hazard, but will the love they have overcome the turbulent times? Charles Main is the ruffian cousin who lives with the family after his parents are killed. Blessed with incredible good looks, he manages to cruise by in life until challenged to a duel. It is only then that he learns just how much the family - and Orry in particular - care about him. He eventually lives Orry's dream of having a soldier's career. After he attends West Point, he battles Indians on the Texas frontier and distinguishes himself in the eyes of his commander, Robert E. Lee. The Hazards are iron-masters in Lehigh Valley, Pennsylvania. William and Maud are the parents, Stanley, Virgilia, George, and Billy are their offspring. Stanley is much like Ashton Main in that he aligns himself with rising stars in the new political world, hoping to come up a winner with an appointment in Washington. He fails miserably in his attempts at running the family's iron works, simply because he is too cautious and afraid to take risks. His wife is a shrew who pushes him into doing things against his own better judgment. George attends West Point but strictly for the education. He intends to give the service only the four years he is required to give. For better or worse, he decides to serve with his friend Orry, meaning that he sees battle in the war over Texas. He brings home an Irish-Catholic bride from Texas, who is not accepted easily into the Pennsylvania society. Since he has much more vision than his brother, George ends up in charge of the Iron Works. Virgilia is a staunch abolitionist who uses any opportunity she gets to make trouble for anyone she perceives as the enemy. She falls for one of James Huntoon's slaves while in South Carolina and helps him escape. Later he is killed in the Harper's Ferry incident. This only serves to reinforce her deep hatred of anyone and anything southern. Billy initially falls for the wild Ashton Main, but later turns to Brett when he sees her as being the more stable of the two. He attends West Point with a year's difference between himself and Charles Main and enters the Engineering Division where he hopes to save enough to support himself and Brett. Billy proposes just before Lincoln is elected, setting in motion a great rift in the country. Can their love overcome the rift? The two families' futures become intertwined when Orry and George attend West Point Military Academy together and become fast friends. Along the way, they make friends who's names are familiar in history: Robert E. Lee, George McClellan, Tom Jackson, and George Pickett. Jakes intersperses these characters from history so well with the fictional characters in the novel that it gives the reader a sense of what the time was like. I have always enjoyed history, and North And South is an excellent combination of the history of these turbulent times as well as a wonderful fictional story. The tension mounts throughout the novel as the tension is building in the country. Can these two families have their friendship survive? At times it doesn't seem likely. Despite their own reservations about the peculiar institution of slavery, the Mains do not like outsiders coming in and criticizing their way of life. Likewise, the Hazards have trouble understanding how their friends -who are decent and moral people in every other sense of the word - can continue to subjugate other human beings based on the color of their skin. There is turmoil and pressure on the friendship from inside of the family as well as outside of the family. One thing that is a trademark of Jakes' novels is an embittered enemy holding a grudge and wanting to exact revenge throughout the story. Elkanah Bent is that character this time around, though Ashton and Virgilia do provide additional strain as a power-hungry southern belle and outspoken abolitionist respectively. The families are great friends, spending summers together as well as entering into business together. Billy and Orry's cousin Charles also attend West Point together. A romance blossoms between the two families, but can love really conquer all as the country is being torn apart? This novel uses history to tell the story, but it also really shows how the tension was building in this country as the inevitable war approached. It's easy to take a clinical look at the causes of the Civil War, but this helps us to have a real understanding of what was going on, as well as being entertaining and a great story. We know what the ending will be, yet I found myself hooked on every single page of the 803 page paperback novel.
After having watched the movie by the same name, I was prompted to pick up this classic and actually read it. I also hunted around a bit for the background on the novel. Dumas was known more during his time for writing plays than novels. The Three Musketeers was originally published in newspapers as a serial and considered "trashy" during its time. The fact that Dumas was such a prolific writer of swashbuckling adventures probably led to this opinion of him, much the same way people feel about authors such as Stephen King and Dean Koontz now (S.K. I definitely feel will be regarded as a classic writer some day.) I never had the opportunity to read it in a classroom setting. That is both good and bad. Good in that I didn't approach this novel with the avarice I occasionally had for a novel I wasforced to read. Bad because I am sure there are hundred of little nuances in the story that I would've benefitted from having them pointed out to me. Knowing, however, that this was originally a serial explains a lot of the novel. At times it seems to repeat itself, while at others it seems to become an entirely different story. The story takes place in the early 1600's in France during the reign of King Louis XIII. D'Artagnan and his quest to be a Musketeer are the main point of the novel. The Musketeers are the highly-regarded defenders of the King and Queen. Much of this story centers around the Musketeers defending the Queen from the evil Cardinal Richelieu. Along the way there are a wide variety of side-stories and adventures that take place. Athos, Aramis, and Porthos are The Three Musketeers. They are each such distinctly different characters who have but the single bond of being Musketeers and loyal to the nobility that hold them together. They answer only to the King himself, as well as the Captain of the Musketeers, Mr. Treville. During the course of the novel, the Musketeers encounter love, intrigue, betrayal, and murder. The purely evil and mysterious character of Milady is another foe they must face. Her treachery to King, country and her fellow man will undoubtedly bring her down eventually, but how much damage will she do along the way? The novel is an excellent introduction to classic literature for anyone due to the adventure and intrigue. Anyone age twelve and over should be capable of reading it. However, I think to have a deeper appreciation of the novel someone would have to be a bit older. Reading it in a classroom setting if you can avoid the feeling of being forced to read it would probably be great, and I would like to read it again as part of a study program. The Three Musketeers is available for free on the web since it is public domain. However, at more than 600 pages in the paperback version I bought, you'd probably end up going through a good bit of toner should you want to print it out. It is also available in ebook form. Be sure to read the unabridged version should you decide to check out this exciting novel. The abridged versions of this book (or just about any book, for that matter) tend to leave out little facts that build up certain characters.
