This has been listened to over the past few weeks when going up and down the motorway to the Midlands. A very good way of spending the time watching the queues of cars not moving much on the M6. We listened to the librivox  version. This is part three of the story of the three musketeers. Reviews for the Part 1 of the story Three Musketeers and Part 2 Twenty years after can be found as earlier blog entries

Alexandre Dumas lived in the first half of the 18th Century and this book really emphasises how popular fiction has changed in it's style since then. Now days a book tends to end on a reasonably lighter note. Even if it is tragic then some glimmer of hope is inserted into the story, even more so if it is hoped that the book is to be made into a film or TV series. This book maybe the last third has hours of sadness, and could in fact be called a tragedy rather than an adventure story.

There is a very detailed synopsis given here  but in essence the book continues the exploits of our four friends around the kings court with the added complication that the king has a twin brother who is locked away in the Bastille, and that some of the Musketeers support one side and some the other.

There are then lots of exploits with various mistresses, lovers, battles, chases involving a large number of cast members that we have met before. Dumas then proceeds to slowly kill off these characters that we have grown to care for, in great tragic detail, even having D'Artagnan who has now been raised to a Count killed off by a cannonball in the last few pages. This leaves only one Musketeer that we have grown to know so well, left alive at the end. (I will not spoil it by giving his name)

The series have been a really good story and have made nearly 75 hours of travelling pass by very quickly. Just perfect for transporting one into a different world. So this is book 37 week 30 novels 25, poetry 1, study, 2 audio 9.

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I have listened to this over the last month as an audio book from librivox and is book 19 week 18. This is the sequel to the Three Musketeers, being 20 years later in the story. It follows events in France during the childhood reign of Louis XIV and in England during the time of the English Civil War. In fact probably half the book is devoted to events in England, and it include the musketeers attempts to free King Charles 1 and prevent his execution . The two main French characters in the plot are Queen Anne of Austria and Cardinal Mazarin who are jointly ruling France between them. It also has various sub-plots covering the rebellion in Paris, that was quite hard to follow not knowing any of the French history concerned. The story ends with the musketeers going their separate ways again and Mazarin, Queen Anne and Louis XIV entering Paris to take up ruling again from that city.

Yesterday after checking up on how many books I had read and updating the blog, I was troubled as I was sure I had read/listened to more than this. I then went back and checked and realised that the entry I had put in at the end of last month on the The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas, was missing. This failure does raise the wider issue of using The Cloud. Should the user save everything locally first before updating the cloud in case of failure during the updating process. I think this is something I will be doing from now on, as the alternative to check that it is live and online after updating is too time consuming. This is the first failure in six months so it is not that bad a record, but as the saying goes once bitten twice shy.

Sadly this blog system does not allow retrospective entries, so it will have to go in here, as book 11 week 11 (audio book 4). I listened to this from a librevox recording. http://librivox.org/the-three-musketeers-by-alexandre-dumas/

The story brought back fantastic memories of the film I watched as a child and all the wonderful antics D’Artagnan gets up to. Amazingly during the course of the story for the majority of the last sixth of the book Milady de Winter is the real star, as it recounts what happens to her and how she tries to seduce her way out of captivity. A fact I don't remember at all from the film. Really looking forward to further long journeys when we can listen to the next instalment.