The Three Musketeers, by Alexandre Dumas

I read this book over a few short weeks; pretty fast for me for such a tome, which speaks to how much I enjoyed it. It contains lots of different tones and moods, which lends to its evergreen freshness. Comedy passes to adventure passes to drama of multiple flavors, with a historical or psychological sketch thrown in the middle. The comedic sections are genuinely funny, most of them using the 4 main characters - and their distinguished lackeys - as the fodder for the humor (but never degrading them more than seems humane; there is always a wonderful balance between us and the author jabbing at the qualities, actions, and circumstances of the Musketeers and the characters almost recognizing themselves as the butt of the friendly joke and smiling along with us). These parts of the book also have a sharp sense of timing so that right around the time the reader is coming to the punchline in their own minds organically, it is revealed and the scene either ends or shifts into a different mode. Really, its hard for me to think of a scene or episode that overstays its welcome. Most self-contained sequences end in a single chapter or so. The longest arc that I can recall is the captivity of Lady de Winter which spans maybe 4 or 5 chapters and is well worth the space.

The book was written and published as a serial and you can feel the influence of this. There is this easy attitude toward both plot and characterization; one is freely sacrificed a bit to maintain the other and the pace of the story. At one point d'Artagnan receives a token from the Queen, in secret, which he naturally treasures and swears to never get rid of in the hopes that he can use it to show himself to the Queen in the future. His buddies, the musketeers, frequently try to get him to sell it (its a fat diamond ring) cause they're always broke. The stakes of at least two (relatively minor) episodes are this ring, which d'Artagnan works hard to avoid losing. Towards the end of the book, as the characters are figuring out how to foil the villain's plots on them, there is a wonderful scene where they all take turns coming up with ideas and poking holes in them. Once they've settled on a plan, whose only downside is that it requires a decent amount of money. d'Artagnan thinks of the ring and agrees to sell it almost at once.

I read the translation by Richard Pevear but haven't compared it with any others. Most of the writing is pretty crisp, as opposed to being overly flowery, especially the dialogue. There are some phrases that feel archaic or generally a bit odd - I learned the word "alguazil", a cop, which came up at least two times - but they fit pretty well with their surroundings and I think they're intentionally dressed up either by Dumas or the translation. Dumas makes it clear, to the point of pointing it out many times, that theses characters inhabit a different time with accordingly different morals and sense or honor. Usually these differences are played for laughs, so I can't help feeling that the occaisional twisted knot of a declaration is intentional.