Jonathan+S's+Book+Review



It is rare to find a book that succeeds in every single thing it attempts to do. __The Count of Monte Cristo__ by Alexandre Dumas is a prime example. It’s a wonder this type of amazing story telling even exists. The book awed me with its sophisticated air and use of language that really made me feel as if I was among 19th century French Nobles. With an amazing story of love, dishonor and betrayal, thousands of well written pages and unforgettable characters __The Count of Monte Cristo__ has it all. In short, it is the best book I have ever read. __The Count of Monte Cristo __ is set in the early 1800s near the return of Napolean Bonaparte. It revolves around a young man, Edmund Dantes who lives in Marseille Spain with his fiancée. He is the first mate of a trade ship and acting captain of it as well. His fiancée and him are about to be married when things go horribly wrong for them. His so called companions get jealous of his good fortune and decide they don’t want him around anymore. They devise a plot to throw Edmund in prison which they then set in motion. Edmund is sent to the Château d’if, a prison for political prisoners where he is locked up for 14 years. He swears revenge against his former friends and things get interesting when he escapes and re-emerges 9 years later into Parisian society.
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At times I became lost in the sheer volume of the book's immense story and didn't get some of what was going on, but later I learned everything I read tied into the main plot in some way. Everything in the story is done well, the plot, the characters, the language; everything but the plot pacing. It is extremely slow in some parts, which is my only complaint. The amount of detail gone into describing everything about the environments to the character's clothes makes up for the times when the book is slow. After the slow parts pass, the book would once again become fast paced and full off action, but I think the author didn't write this to be an action packed novel, I think he wrote it purely to tell a good story with amazing and vivid imagery and definitely succeeded in doing just that.

Next to the story line, the characters of __The Count of Monte Cristo__ are well thought out and each have their own goals, motives and personalities. By far, the most interesting character is Edmund Dantes who takes the name of The Count of Monte Cristo. After his escape from the Chateau d'if, Monte Cristo becomes obsessed with his plans of revenge to the point of lunacy. He takes on dozens of identities and the lengths at which he goes to accomplish his plan are absolutely insane. Although he makes friends within the families of his enemies, such as Albert de Morcerf, son of Ferdinand de Morcerf, he would betray and destroy them without a second thought in order to ruin his enemies’' estate.

I commend the book for its amount of detail, amazing language and being so darn interesting that I couldn't stop reading at times, but criticize its slow plot pacing at times and its chapters that seemed to drag on endlessly without any relevance to the main plot line. In the end, I would not recommend this book to anyone who doesn't like to read or doesn't have any patience while reading. Other than that, if you have the time and can handle a little confusion, you should pick this book up and read it. You end up liking it just as much as I did.