The Big Book of Swashbuckling Adventure, edited by Lawrence Ellsworth

My wife found me this gem: a thick collection of swashbuckling tales from several masters of the field - many of them unknown to me until now. You can find all of the big names here, from Alexandre Dumas and Baroness Orczy to Rafael Sabatini, but also some less well known names such as Stanley J. Feyman and Anthony Hope. Pirates, swordsmen, nobles - you can find it all here. It is pretty impossible to review an entire collection of stories from so many authors: a lot depends on the quality of the individual stories and they are still all of them unique and would deserve a separate paragraph of their own. I don't have time such a deep review, unfortunately, but I will try to give you my overall impression.

Review: Death of a Musketeer by Sarah D'Almeida

I've read quite a few pastiches based on Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers, so I have some tolerance to the fact that they rarely meet the quality of the original. Death of a Musketeer, however, is a risky venture from the start: instead of continuing the story or covering the "lost years", the author sets out to rewrite the original, claiming that Dumas altered the story and she has found new evidence of what actually happened to the four heroes. The result is mediocre at best and changes the characters beyond recognition and likeability.

Review: The First Musketeer (2014)

The First Musketeer is a 6-part mini web series created in 2014 with the help of an Indiegogo funding campaign. It is a prequel story to Dumas' The Three Musketeers and introduces Athos and Porthos as somewhat younger men when they engage in their first shared adventure.

The story begins with an innkeeper who hires two guardsmen to toss out an unwanted drunk visitor, a young man who turns out to be Athos. The guardsmen and Athos soon become friends and have time to meet with another familiar hero, Porthos, before they are all drawn into an adventure.

The actors are surprisingly good for such a low budget series. There are some bouts of overacting and somewhat ill-paced or stiff dialogue, but these issues do not get in the way of the fun. The costumes are a mix of fantasy and 17th century, but more tasteful than the leather outfits we saw in BBC's The Musketeers. The swordfights are more about dramatic, backlit postures than realistic bloody conflicts, but they are entertaining to watch. The indoor sets are sometimes clumsy, especially when we are supposed to believe that some of the scenes are taking place in the Louvre, but this is compensated by the outdoor scenes that are filmed in actual southern France locations.

The episodes are short, ten minute chapters, which makes the whole series about 60 minutes in length. There's not much room for story, especially as the writers spend most of the first two to three episodes introducing the characters. But there are swordfights and lighthearted humour enough to keep you entertained for the entire length of the "season" and the end leaves the door open for season two. Unfortunately, this does not seem to be happening - a pity, since the cast and crew show promise and a second season would surely have improved from the first.

For a Dumas fan, this series is a must watch, especially since it is freely available on Youtube.

The Memoirs of the Count De Rochefort by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras

Comte de Rochefort is one of the most memorable secondary characters in Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After. But Dumas did not make up the character himself. He got it from an earlier novel written by Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras in 1678 (translated into English in 1696). In Dumas' handling, Comte de Rochefort was a cunning antagonist and later a friend to titular character d'Artagnan, as well as a loyal servant to Cardinal Richelieu. Because of my enthusiasm with the 17th century, I was more than eager to read fiction both set in the era and written during it.

Review: The Wedding of Cyrano (D'Artagnan and Cyrano Reconciled, #3) by Paul Féval, fils

In 1928 Paul Féval, fils' wrote a trilogy known as D'Artagnan and Cyrano Reconciled, continuing an earlier series that he wrote with M. Lassez, called The Years Between. The stories are set after Alexandre Dumas' Twenty Years After and show d'Artagnan and some of the rest of the musketeers in various adventures with Rostand's Cyrano de Bergerac. I've read and reviewed all the other parts of the story and now it is time to tackle the last one: The Wedding of Cyrano. It should be noted that this review will likely spoil some of the events of the earlier parts of the story, but no more than the title of this novel itself already does.

Review: The Escape of the Man in the Iron Mask (D'Artagnan and Cyrano Reconciled, #2) by Paul Féval, fils

Paul Féval, fils' wrote a trilogy known as D'Artagnan and Cyrano Reconciled. The story is set after Alexandre Dumas' Twenty Years After and spans the years between 1649 and 1655. I've previously reviewed the first part of the trilogy and was somewhat annoyed by the uneven plotting. The second part works much better, but takes a serious deviation of the Dumas' original story, introducing a plot with the Man in the Iron Mask much earlier than Dumas did and leading to a vastly different plot, cunningly mixed with actual historical details.

Review: The King's Passport by H. Bedford-Jones

I've previously reviewed H. Bedford-Jones' pastiche of Alexandre Dumas' classic work. Interestingly enough, his other story featuring the classic hero, d'Artagnan, The King's Passport, is not in any way connected with the longer work and is not really a pastiche at all: rather than being set in 1630 and featuring the Dumas version of d'Artagnan (who was born at least a decade before his historical counterpart), the story is set ten years later, in 1640, when d'Artagnan has only recently arrived to Paris and is serving in the Guard.

Review: The Man in the Iron Mask (1998)

Alexandre Dumas' The Man in the Iron Mask storyline has been adapted to film several times. I previously reviewed the 1977 version and the 1979 version and noted how they had changed the original story to a large degree. That's no different with the 1998 version of the tale, starring Leonardo diCaprio, but the changes that have been made are very different from the previous versions.

Review: The Fifth Musketeer (1979)

1970's saw at least two film adaptations of The Man in the Iron Mask story by Alexandre Dumas. The first was the Richard Chamberlain starred version in the 1977 that we reviewed a short while ago and the second was The Fifth Musketeer in 1979. Both of them take only the basic idea from the original story and go on a completely different tangent from then on. However, although Chamberlain's version was originally "made for TV" only, it ends up being far superior - and even much more loyal to the original story - of these two adaptations.

Review: The Man in the Iron Mask (1977)

The Man in the Iron Mask is a film adaptation of the story told by Alexandre Dumas in his d'Artagnan Romances. It takes portions of the story of King Louis XIV's love affair with Louise de la Vallière and combines it with a completely reworked plotline involving Louis' secret twin brother. Overall, I must say that the film manages to deliver a more interesting and involving story than the original novel did.

The Three Musketeers at the Lahti City Theatre

Last night, my wife and I attended the last performance of The Three Musketeers (Kolme Muskettisoturia) at the Lahti City Theatre (Lahden kaupunginteatteri). I'm not going to review it, as there is no sense in doing so for a play that no one can see anymore, but I wanted to bring up some of the highlights and some of what-one-might-call the low points in this interpretation of Alexandre Dumas' classic story. Let's begin with the trailer:

Review: State Secret (D'Artagnan and Cyrano Reconciled, #1) by Paul Féval, fils

I've previously reviewed Paul Féval, fils' and M. Lassez' The Years Between series that saw d'Artagnan meet up with Cyrano de Bergerac and go on adventures with each other. A few years later, Paul Féval decided to revisit the characters and wrote a trilogy that is known as D'Artagnan and Cyrano Reconciled. The story is set after Alexandre Dumas' Twenty Years After and spans the years between 1649 and 1655.

My Top Five Reads of 2015

Last year, I looked back at my top five reads in 2014 and as it was a pretty fun experience to relive some of the highlights of that year, I see no reason not to try the same thing again. It was not easy this time either, since there were quite a few books that I had given the same ratings, but one must be ruthless sometimes and make decisions.

Review: The Wolf-Leader by Alexandre Dumas

The further back you go in the werewolf genre literature, the less and less similar they are to the modern Hollywood-influenced genre stereotype. Alexandre Dumas was a prolific author who wrote The Wolf-Leader some time after he got into financial troubles and ended his cooperation with one of his most important collaborators, Auguste Maquet - with whom he had written the famous d'Artagnan Romances. I'm not enough of a Dumas scholar to say whether my disappointment with The Wolf-Leader might be the result of Dumas having worked alone this time, but I cannot but wonder if there's a connection.

Review: The Musketeers Second Season

Last year, I had a few words to say about the first season of the BBC series, The Musketeers, and since I've now seen the second season, I thought that I should say something about it as well. In short, on its second season, the series continues with its free interpretation of history and Dumas' characters. But, given that Dumas himself bastardised history with relatively free hand, this is not something that we can blame the series very much for.

Review: The Club Dumas by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Arturo Pérez-Reverte's The Club Dumas was used as the basis of the 1999 Roman Polanski film The Ninth Gate, but the two have very little to do with each other. So little, in fact, that I only became faintly aware that the two might be connected when I was reading the novel - but I only checked and verified the connection after I had finished the book (out of unnecessary fear of spoiling the story). Whereas the film was a slight disappointment to me back in the day, the novel is one of the best I've read in a long time. Perhaps because what it actually is: a treat to all those readers who love the old serial novels, such as Alexandre Dumas' The Three Musketeers. And, if you've ever taken a look at this particular blog, you'll know that I'm just such a person.

Review: The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas

The long journey is now over. I had planned to save the last part of Alexandre Dumas' d’Artagnan Romances until later in the year, but somehow, after reading the previous part, I decided to finish off the series. The Romances consist of three works: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. The last of these has been published in several different editions that divide the novel into separate books in different ways. I was reading the Project Gutenberg version, which separates the novel into four parts. You can find the reviews of the first, second and third part here, here and here.

Review: Louise de La Vallière by Alexandre Dumas

I've been slowly reading through Alexandre Dumas' d’Artagnan Romances that consist of three novels: The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After and The Vicomte of Bragelonne: Ten Years Later. The last of these has been published in several different editions that divide the novel into separate books in different ways. I am reading the Project Gutenberg version, which separates the novel into four parts. You can find the reviews of the first and second parts here and here.

Review: D'Artagnan: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers by H. Bedford-Jones

H. Bedford-Jones' D'Artagnan: A Sequel to The Three Musketeers is a fast-paced adventure set after the events of The Three Musketeers, in the year 1630, when Cardinal Richelieu was fighting for his position against powerful enemies - and eventually solidified his power. The novel features all the familiar musketeers and several new characters in a relatively simple but fun adventure. The author uses the traditional gimmick of the time, claiming that the story is based on Dumas' lost papers, just like Dumas based his story on earlier documents.

Review: The Heir of Buckingham by Paul Féval, fils and M. Lassez

It is time to take a look at the fourth and last part of Paul Féval and M. Lassez's The Years Between series, called The Heir of Buckingham. The series stars the famous characters originally penned by Alexandre Dumas and Edmond Rostand: d'Artagnan and Cyrano de Bergerac. The events of the series take place in-between Dumas' The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, in 1641.

As this is a four part series, this review will necessarily spoil some of the events taking place in the first three parts. However, I try to keep these at minimum. Feel free to jump to the last paragraph if you are worried.