Blurb
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.
My thought
Alexandre Dumas was already a best-selling novelist when he wrote this historical romance, combining (as he claimed) the two essentials of life--"l'action et l'amour." The Man in the Iron Mask climactically concludes the epic adventures of the three Musketeers: here, Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and their friend D'Artagnan, once invincible, meet their destinies.
The book reads more like a histtory lesson, and a political warning than it does a swashbuckler, but it still has Dumas's charm to carry it through to its tragic ending. The biggest surprise for me was how little the book actually had to do with anyone in an iron mask; it almost seemed as those this was brought in as a ready reason for the action that unfolds after the man's identity is revealed. All-in-all an enjoyable book, but not nearly as good as Monte Cristo.
I liked the concept, but the whole dual prince thing was WAY underplayed. It ended up being a really random book, I thought. What about the intrigue? It would have been better the Phillipe ended up on the throne and no one knew it. He just disappeared.
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