Book Review of #4.5 Louise de la Valliere Part II by Alexandre Dumas

Name of book: Louise de la Valliere Part II

Author Name: Alexandre Dumas

ISBN: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/

Publisher: http://ebooks.adelaide.edu.au/

Part of Series: D'Artagnan Series by Alexandre Dumas Sequel to Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, Vicomte de Bragelonne, prequel to The Man in iron mask

Type of book: Adult, French, 17th century, Louis XIV

Year it was published: (Original version in France 1847-1850)

Summary:

In the Musketeers' final adventure, D'Artagnan remains in the service of the corrupt King Louis XIV after the Three Musketeers have retired and gone their separate ways. Meanwhile, a mysterious prisoner in an iron mask wastes away deep inside the Bastille. When the destinies of king and prisoner converge, the Three Musketeers and D'Artagnan find themselves caught between conflicting loyalties. (from Goodreads Man in Iron Mask)

Characters:

Good news is that this part has more Three Musketeers sightings, so of course it becomes exciting. For me personally, the characters seemed a bit on the flat side, and I'm that I'm out of Louis XIV's court and that Louise is not much seen. I am also glad that she might be paying back for her mistakes.

Theme:

I would guess one of the themes would be is Raoul struggling to get over Louise, and at long last Louis and Louise are paying back for their affair, (at least when it comes to Athos and Raoul.)

Plot:

Instead of picking up at the scene where Raoul discovers Louise's indiscretion, we learn an interesting secret about Anne of Austria, and only then we go back to the exciting scene where Raoul tries to convince himself that its not true. We do finally get to see more of the Musketeers, yes Athos included. The point of view is in omniscient third person and it switches from one person to another in almost every chapter. There is a lot of jumping in this book.

Author Information:

Alexandre Dumas is a French author born in 1802 and wrote other novels such as The Count of Monte Cristo, The Man in the Iron Mask and The Three Musketeers. He died in 1870 and also wrote The Reign of Margot.

Opinion:

I honestly found this on the Internet and printed it out. What happened was that I bought a wrong Man in the Iron Mask version. Shortly after reading Count of Monte Cristo, I was starving for more Dumas, thus I got The Three Musketeers and Man in the Iron Mask. But later I learned that Man in the Iron Mask was part of the book series, set after Twenty Years Later, Vicomte de Bragelonne and Louise de la Valliere. Vicomte and Louise I got Oxford Edition. I found out with my copy of Man in the iron Mask I was missing some chapters, which then I printed out. Compared to Louise de la Valliere Part I, this was much nicer, although yet again the strands become unmanageable.

2 out of 5
(0: Stay away unless a masochist 1: Good for insomnia 2: Horrible but readable; 3: Readable and quickly forgettable, 4: Good, enjoyable 5: Buy it, keep it and never let it go.)