Where It's a Sequel and It Isn't

The Forty-Five Guardsmen by Alexandre Dumas
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I always enjoy Dumas. Lots of action and intrigue, lots of hiding and sneaking and telling lies, lots of heartbreak, and lots and lots of dialogue--clever, witty, insulting, clowning, railing, arguing, amusing. It's that dialogue that keeps the whole thing rolling forward even though the plot is constructed like a wagon built out of odds and ends with four different-sized wheels.

Not to be taken as criticism.

This is the third (last, I think) of the Valois romances, telling the story of the sons of Catherine de Medici. (Try googling that to see if I'm right--the internet does not have a coherent answer to any questions about his historical novels. I gave up. Then tried again. Then gave up again.)

Okay, yes, it does stumble a little, IMO, in the way it drops and then picks up storylines (like from two books ago) without refreshing our memory before dropping it again. There's a lot of "Is that the woman from the first book? Is that the second guy who was trying to kidnap her? Or someone else?" On the one hand, some of that would work better on a re-read, because my memory is part of the problem, but some of it was just careless plotting. I thought we'd see Henry of Navarre on the throne by the end of the third book based on the plot of the first, but we never quite get there. We see him in book 3, and watch him take a city that had been promised as part of his wife's dowry, but that's the end of his participation. Other characters are brought back (like Diana, who is loved by every man who sees her) and are made the main character for a bit, but then we switch again to the king or Chicot or Henry of Navarre so long I forget she's still out there. It's all entertaining, truly, but Dumas leaves lots of loose ends.

However, it's still fun. I read it like it's vacation in a foreign land where you just experience the place without expectations. We get to watch half a dozen stories zigzagging together, flying apart, stumbling forward at their own pace, without knowing which, if any, will have a full conclusion. If Dumas were here I'd give him some notes--e.g., focus the whole thing on Chicot, cuz he's the best character here, and complete his arc, please--but since he's not, alas, I'll just enjoy it as is.

So--flawed, I would dare say, but still compelling. Still awesome.

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