Literally one of my favorite books.
Have you ever wondered what makes a sequel better than the first book? I still don't know but Alexandre Dumas sure did.

When we last saw d'Artagnan & his three buds (Athos, Porthos, and Aramis), they'd just rendered a terrible judgment on their enemy (read: they freaking murdered Milady de Winter with a sham trial and a rogue decapitation before dumping her body in a river.... rest in peace, Queen, you did not deserve that). Then Athos, Porthos, and Aramis quit being musketeers, PLEASE don't ask me when or in what order because Dumas did not care about continuity and he definitely changed his mind and/or forgot, leaving d'Artagnan alone. That's pretty much how he stays for twenty years. The old king, Louis XIII, dies, as does the Grey Eminence himself, Cardinal Richelieu. The future Louis XIV is still a child king, not yet enthroned, and his regent mother has teamed up with THE most unpopular man in France, Cardinal Mazarin.

Basically, d'Artagnan ends up on one side of a power-struggle, and (some) of his old friends are on the other. Friend vs friend. Or so it seems. Turns out, friendship never dies. Just like guilt never dies. And the musketeers, and Athos in particular, have been carrying a large helping of guilt: the guilt of what they did to Milady de Winter.

So Part 1 is basically d'Artagnan reuniting with his friends only to realize they're not on the same side of a budding French civil war, and Part 2 is "Mission Impossible: Roundheads vs Cavaliers", wherein two of our heroes are tasked with saving Charles I from Cromwell's chopping block, and two are tasked with helping Cromwell to capture him.  I know my history so that did spoil the outcome of the mission a little, but Dumas writes in such a compelling, page-turner way that I WAS CONVINCED that somehow, somehow(!!!) our heroes would succeed! And they 100% fail. It's horrific. It's also the villain origin story of the third book. I'm crying.  This Part 2 is where we meet my absolute favorite character: Mordaunt, a British agent  who is also the son of the late Milady de Winter, stripped of his name and inheritance by his uncle, the new Lord de Winter, left for dead as a child and rejected when he found his family again, only to discover his mother was murdered and vow to avenge her. Basically.... he's like the Count of Monte Cristo but as an angry, skinny 23-year-old. I love him. I hate what happens to him. Rat child, you were taken from us too soon.

ANYWAY. Read the Three Musketeers. Then read this. Then repeat as necessary.

Highly recommended for anyone who loves adventure, flawed characters, and thrilling historical politics. Plus humor!

در این بازی هر کسی نکشد، کشته می‌شود!
ای‌کاش با دادنِ عمرِ هر نویسنده معاصر بدردنخور، یک سال به عمر دوما اضافه می‌شد و این روند این‌قدر ادامه پیدا می‌کرد تا دوما کتابهای دیگری هم می‌نوشت...(محض مزاحی تا کمی جدی)

When I finished "The Three Musketeers" last year, I had no idea there was a sequel to it. Much less five sequels! So finding this book and being reunited with D'Artagnan, Porthos, Athos, and Aramis was quite a thrill. And this book certainly didn't disappoint. While it's not the Three Musketeers(few books are) it's still a swashbuckling, action packed adventure filled with diabolical villains and the at times ethically challenged Musketeers.
Dumas was a master at creating these kind of characters with huge character flaws such as vanity, lust, greed, gluttony, or random senseless violence(a cornerstone of these four as you never know who is going to get cut down on a whim for no particular reason) and yet you still love them. As flawed as they are, they are equally capable of honour, kindness, loyalty(particularly to each other), and appreciation of good food(Porthos and his stomach...).
This being my third Dumas novel and most likely not my last, I feel pretty confident in saying that he is to this day probably the finest adventure writer to have ever lived. Not many writers can make you laugh and feel indignation in the span of one paragraph or make 1000+ pages fly by but Dumas always does. If you've read The Three Musketeers, this is the book for you. If you haven't read it yet... Zounds! What are you waiting for?!

This is a sequel done right. It doesn’t try to copy the original but stays true to the theme of the first book. There simple just more in this one. More action, more at stack and more character to like/hate. The are times when the story slows and drags on, but when the tall is this long it is forgivable. You just need to remember that it will pick up again and you be happy that you keep on reading.

So much better than the original - daring, exciting, and fun.

দীর্ঘকাল আগে পড়া। নিজের কৈশোরে। স্মৃতিটা এখনো অমলিন। জ্বলজ্বলে। রিভেঞ্জ! প্রতিশোধ! সেবার অনুবাদে পড়া এই ক্লাসিকের কখনো ভোলা হবে না। যাবে না। যদিনা স্মৃতিভ্রষ্ট হই।

Come col precedente, questo secondo romanzo di Dumas é riuscito nuovamente a conquistarmi, riportandomi a fantasticare di terre straniere, di avventure travolgenti, di drammi e di intrighi.
Ancora una volta, l'autore ha fatto centro. I personaggi sono molto maturati in questi vent'anni trascorsi dagli eventi del primo libro. Soprattutto D'Artagnan, che é diventato ancora più scaltro. I suoi piani, i suoi stratagemmi ed i dialoghi frizzanti assieme ai suoi compagni mi hanno sempre intrigato molto.
Sono costretta a salutare nuovamente i personaggi di questa meravigliosa storia. Ma spero di poterli rincontrare tutti anche nell'ultimo libro, "il visconte di Bragelonne"!
É inutile ripetere che ne consiglio la lettura.

This book pales in comparison to The Three Musketeers only because Mordaunt is a much less interesting villain than his mother, Milady. Again, it would not be too difficult to twist this story so that Mordaunt becomes no villain at all. His goal is simply to avenge the murder of his mother. To that end he stabs a man who was already dying, he kills another of the murderers on a field of battle, and he tries to blow up the remaining four. In his mind, he's simply trying to get for himself the justice that the world denies him. That's not much different than what the Musketeers did to Milady at the end of the first book. But even with this moral ambiguity, Mordaunt is neither as interesting, nor as fun as Milady.

I loved the treatment of royalty in this book. The Musketeers are fierce royalists. Athos and Aramis have learned to distinguish the office of royalty from the person wields the power. Porthos is too thick to really get the distinction. And D'Artagnan is learning. His main teachers are Anne and Mazarin, the new prime minister since the death of Richelieu. After his brilliant service twenty years before, D'Artagnan has been largely ignored, and remains a lieutenant in the service of the Queen. She has shown no appreciation at all either for his extraordinary service to her, or for his remarkable loyalty and abilities.

During this book, there is an uprising in Paris which threatens the lives of Anne, Mazarin, and the young King Louis XIV. At their pleading, and their promises never to forget such a service, D'Artagnan uses tremendous audacity to save the three of them, and to deliver them all to safety outside of Paris. Without reward, he is then sent to England to deliver a message to Cromwell. That is the extent of his orders, and he delivers the message. Then, he goes outside the scope of his mission (but without actually violating any orders), and tries unsuccessfully to save the life of King Charles. When he returns to France, his service to Anne is of course completely forgotten, and he's thrown in prison with the intention of letting him rot there forever. Such is the gratitude and loyalty of actual monarchs.

The amazing thing is that the Musketeers all remain fierce royalists in spite of all the evidence. They are convinced that the only problem with the system is that the wrong ministers are advising the monarchs. Also, from what we see in the book, it looks like the only alternatives available is the despotism of people like Cromwell, or those even worse. Thus, even though everything ends up pretty happily for our four heroes, I found this to be surprisingly bleak in its outlook. But even so, Dumas has a knack of being exciting and fun even when bleak. I'm looking forward to the third installment of these books, but its a monster, and will probably take me quite some time.

دنباله کتاب سه تفنگدار و دومین کتاب در مجموعه دارتن‌یان که در ترجمه ذبیح‌الله منصوری از بخش دوم (بعد از بیست سال) فصل 65 جلد دوم تا آخر فصل 141 از جلد چهارم میباشد.

Finisce (per ora) il mio viaggio nella bibliografia del signor Alex.
Devo dire che è stato una montagna russa di emozioni. Stento ancora a credere come un tizio che si scordi i nomi dei suoi stessi personaggi e non azzecchi una data manco a pagarlo riesca ad essere un narratore così formidabile. Va detto che la saga dei moschettieri mi ha convinto (per ORA, manca il terzo volume) decisamente di meno del Conte di Montecristo. È chiaro anche che l'intento come il pubblico a cui erano diretti erano totalmente diversi.
Ho parlato con diverse persone che si sono dette preoccupate di approcciare questo secondo volume per "non rovinarsi i Tre Moschettieri". A queste persone posso provare a dire che, secondo me, questo libro è divertente e piacevole come il primo. A dirla tutta, a me è piaciuto anche di più. Certo, mancano dei villains carismatici come Richelieu e Milady, ma il libro compensa offrendo una caratterizzazione migliore dei nostri quattro scemi ed aggiungendo interessanti punti di contrasto fra di loro.
Rimane il fatto che ho odiato ogni singola riga spesa a discorrere di quanto sia bella la monarchia assoluta... ma a parte questo, per me è promosso a pieni voti.

They are no longer young boys, Athos, Porthos, Aramis and D'Artagnan but they are still devoted friends! Life has spread them to the four winds over the past twenty years, but fate and fortune call them back together again.

I found Twenty Years After, the next in the series, harder to follow than its prequel The Three Musketeers, mostly because the cast of characters was much larger and the plot so much more complicated. However, for that reason, I think I appreciated it more. The humor was still there and the characters of the FOUR Musketeers as vivid and consistent as ever, although sadly only D'Artagnan is still officially a Musketeer. They are as cavalier as ever and in fact, this is where the term comes from if you, like me, did not realize that the term ‘cavalier’ has a rich history. A cavalier was traditionally a mounted soldier or knight, specifically those who supported Charles I of England, the only British monarch to be executed. Later, it was meant to portray them as roistering gallants (to justify the killing of the king?) and acquired its derogatory connotation.

In this story, our four heroes have their skills, patriotism and most of all their friendship tested in new ways as they become divided by the politics of the time which are most confusing. I wasn’t familiar with most of the French history of this time period but knew some of the British history and Charles’ tragic fate, so I enjoyed learning about it, though I expect historians would have much to critique in Dumas. Never mind, he is easier and more enjoyable to read than most of them are.

What I appreciated most was Dumas’ sensitive and empathetic portrayal of Charles’ betrayal and execution, Henrietta’s (his wife) devotion to him and her abominable treatment by the French monarchy and the recognition by Athos and Aramis of the duty owed to monarchy regardless of state. As a French author you might not expect Dumas to show so much generosity to a foreign monarch, but he portrayed Charles and his family in a very positive light, consistently asserting the necessity of loyalty to one’s divinely anointed sovereign as God’s representative on earth. Dumas was far less positive in his portrayal of France’s queen of the time, Anne of Austria, though he stood by the same principle. I know that kings and queens are not considered in a positive light in our day, but it was a different time then. It is interesting to realize that Dumas wrote this novel post-French Revolution looking back on the executions of France’s own King Louis and Queen Marie Antoinette.

An interesting character introduced in this book is Raoul, ‘an orphan, deserted by his mother, who left him in the house of a poor country priest (who Athos) brought up.’ We learn the history of this young man in this book and then he is to feature again in the The Vicomte de Bragelonne, the title of the next in the series.

Most highly recommended! Onward Musketeers!

Another Dumas novel that will ultimately shape my life for years to come. Dropped down to three stars for the obvious moments of Dumas getting payed for milking every sweet word written.