The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas

(Book Review)

            And so I come to the last book in the Three Musketeers series, after The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, and Louise de la Valliere.

******** Spoiler Warning And Self-Indulgent Warning ******

          Two warnings before I start this review. 

            First of all, I’m going to spoil the ending of this book, and The Man in the Iron Mask is one of those books which is best read spoiler free—i.e. there are a few plot twists along the way, and an advanced knowledge of the story will ruin this book.  So, if you haven’t read this book yet, and you think you might read it at any point in the future, don’t read my review now.

            Secondly, I’m going to talk about my experience reading this book in the context of my previous expectations.  Since my personal previous expectations are probably of interest to no one else but me, that means this review can probably be considered somewhat self-indulgent.  Be forewarned.

My Previous Encounters with This Story

          Growing up, we had a Children’s Classic version of this story in our house, which I read at some point, but remember virtually nothing of. 

            [It’s funny how some stuff stays with you, and other stuff doesn’t.  As I mentioned in a previous review, many of the simplified classics I read in childhood I can still remember very well, but some books, for one reason or another, just never took hold in my memory.  Obviously it’s difficult for me to critique a book I can’t remember, but I suspect the problem was that The Man in the Iron Mask only fully makes sense as part of a larger story, and so the incomplete story that I read didn’t make much of an impression on my young brain.]

            The only thing I do remember from the Children’s Classic Edition was that most of the musketeers died at the end.  So, at least that much of the book had been already spoiled for me, even if I remembered little else.

            The other previous encounter I had with this story was that 1998 Leonardo DiCaprio and John Malkovich movie (W).  I saw that movie back when it first came out, and haven’t seen it since then.  And as it’s a forgettable movie, I’ve largely forgotten about it.

            Or at least, forgotten about the details of it.  I did remember the main premise—Louis XIV is a real jerk, there’s an exact duplicate of Louis XIV being kept inside the Bastille, and so the musketeers switch the bad version of Louis XIV for the good version of Louis XIV, and everyone lives happily ever after.

            So that was pretty much where I expected this story to go.

My Expectations Leading Up to this Book

          The Man in the Iron Mask is the conclusion of the story started in The Vicomte de Bragelonne, Ten Years Later, and Louise de la Valliere.  All four books are published as one volume in the original French.

            So, as I read through all the previous books, I had been expecting all along that the story would climax with Louis XIV being replaced.

           

            However, the more I read, the more it seemed unlikely that this was the ending Alexandre Dumas was heading for.   There were several indications along the way that this story was not matching the tone of the Hollywood movie.

1). First of all, the books had a heavily pro-royalist tone, and it seemed a bit incongruous to believe that the whole story was building to an act of rebellion against the king.

2). Secondly, although Dumas was taking a number of liberties with history, he was also making a lot of efforts to integrate his fictional story with real historical figures and events.  The idea of permanently replacing the king with an identical doppelganger seemed like it would throw the story too much off the historical rails, and seemed liked the kind of plot twist that belonged altogether in another genre.

3). Thirdly, in the movie Leonardo DiCaprio’s Louis XIV was a real jerk who deserved to be usurped, but the Louis XIV in Dumas’s books is much more sympathetic.  Although he does make a number of bad decisions, it’s also clear that he has a lot of good in him, and, when he is under the influence of D’Artagnan, Louis XIV can usually be persuaded to do the honorable thing.

4). Fourthly, in the previous 3 books, the reader had spent a lot of time getting to know Louis XIV.  The expectation seemed to be that the reader was witnessing the beginnings, and gradual formation, of one of France’s most powerful monarchs.  It seemed a bit odd that we were going to spend all that time getting to know this Louis XIV, only to suddenly switch to a different Louis XIV in the last book.

5). Fifthly, the historical warlike and vainglorious Louis XIV seemed a lot more in character with the young king presented in the first 3 books, and not with his humble doppelganger. 

6). And finally, by looking at the historical profiles of some of the main characters from Wikipedia, I already knew that a lot of these characters were heading for tragedy by Louis XIV’s hand: Louis de la Valliere—abandoned (W), Fouquet—imprisoned (W), Comte de Guiche—exiled (W).  If Louis XIV had been replaced by a kinder, gentler doppelganger, then how to explain that none of these characters were to be saved from their fates?

            And yet, despite all these gradually creeping doubts, as I read along I still expected some sort of switch to take place in the final book.  After all, everyone knows that The Man in the Iron Mask is about a man imprisoned for being the doppelganger of the king.  And what’s the point of having the story about a doppelganger, if there is to be no switch?

My Experience Reading the Book

            The Man in the Iron Mask starts out very promising.  In fact, initially the story looks like it’s going to be much more promising than the movie.

            In the movie, the 4 musketeers were working together to switch kings, and they were doing it for altruistic purposes.

            In the book, Aramis is working alone to switch kings (Porthos is only tricked into helping).  And Aramis is doing it largely just to further his own ambitions.  (Admittedly there is a mixture of motives—he does also believe that Louis XIV embattled background is going to make him too much of a combative king, but he is also very explicit about all the quid pro quos he expects from the new king once he’s completed the switch.)

            This promises to be way more interesting than the movie version  First of all, it pits the musketeers against each other—D’Artagnan is convinced Aramis is up to something, and is trying to find him out, while Aramis is trying to stay two steps ahead of D’Artagnan in order to complete his plot.

            Secondly, it adds a large mixture of moral ambiguity to the whole issue.  You’re not really sure whether to root for D’Artagnan or Aramis—whether to pity the real Louis XIV, or to hope for the success of his usurper.

            Also, in the movie, the royal switch is the conclusion of the story.  But in the book, the switch happens near the beginning of The Man in the Iron Mask, which made me optimistic that the whole rest of the book was going to deal with the story of the false king.  What would the false king do when he was on the throne?  Would D’Artagnan be able to spot the imposter?  Would Aramis be able to control his creation?  I was really hooked at this point.

            And after a story that has been plodding along painfully slowly for the last several books, focusing on the tedium of court romances, this abrupt plot departure seemed at once both completely out of place for the story, and at the same time wonderfully bizarre.  It was as if Alexandre Dumas suddenly said, “Okay, forget about all those court romances I’ve been boring you with for the last 3 books.  What if all of a sudden Aramis comes in out of nowhere and switches kings in the middle of the night?  How is that to shake up the plot?”

            To which I was like, “Yeah, great!  Give me more of this!” 

            At this point in the story, I couldn’t put the book down, and was reading late into the night.

            And then, to my immense disappointment, the whole plot thread comes to a disappointing end.  The false king only spends a few minutes with the royal court before the real Louis XIV returns, the doppelganger is put back into prison, and the whole plot about switched kings comes to an end in a very anti-climatic and very unsatisfying fashion.

            And then, that brief bit of excitement over, the story settled back into the slow plodding pace that had characterized the previous 3 books.

            And back to the same old boring plot threads.

            Because I had looked ahead at his Wikipedia bio, I knew the fall of Nicholas Fouquet was coming eventually.  But even if I hadn’t looked at Wikipedia, I would have known it anyway, since there’s foreshadowing in the book.  In some places of the book, like in chapter 11, Dumas will step outside of his narrative to remind us that in the real history, Fouquet was ultimately destroyed by Louis XIV.

            The tragedy of Fouquet could have been a better plot point if Dumas had dealt with it quicker, but instead he tries to milk the pathos of it for too many chapters.  As doom begins to foreclose on Fouquet, he always seems to have one last desperate plan after another of avoiding disaster.  Since the reader knows that Fouquet is already doomed, the reader knows all of these plans aren’t going to work, but we have to sit through all of them anyway.  All of these last hopes then fail one after another, each failure leaving Fouquet more doomed and despondent than before.  Eventually I felt like Dumas was just playing with the reader, and wanted to shout at the book, “Come on, we all know what’s going to happen.  Just do it already.”

            The same thing that could be said of the fall of Fouquet could be said about the deaths of Porthos, Raoul, and then Athos.  There’s just way too much foreshadowing and build-up leading up to each death.

            I suppose this was probably the style of 19th century books, but as a modern reader, I can’t help but imagine how much better the book would have been if Dumas had cut out all the foreshadowing and build-up.  For example, in the case of Porthos, he announces to Aramis several times that he has a premonition he is going to die soon, and then he has a long drawn out death scene.  Imagine how much more shocking (and better) the book would have been if Porthos’s death had just come suddenly out of nowhere.  Likewise for the deaths of Raoul, and Athos.

            But while several plot threads are milked way too much in this last volume, others get the short thrift. 

            In the previous 3 books the reader has spent a lot of time with characters whose respective plot threads are now, in this last volume, either just disregarded entirely or only alluded to in an offhand way in the epilogue.

            The downfall of Louise de la Valliere is only alluded to briefly in the epilogue.

            The fact that Comte De Guiche was sent into exile by Louis XIV for conspiring with Princess Henrietta was also only just briefly alluded to in the epilogue.

            And the fact that Princess Henrietta herself died in mysterious circumstances shortly afterwards (W), rumored to have been poisoned by the Chevalier de Lorraine, is also only briefly alluded to.

            And then there were characters and plot threads who were just completely dropped altogether.  (What ever happened to the scheming of Montalais and Malicorne?)

            On the one hand, given how long and drawn out the downfall of Nicholas Fouquet was, I’m somewhat relieved Dumas didn’t make a big drawn out deal about all those other endings.

            But on the other hand, I wish the story had been written by someone who knew how to wrap up their plot points a lot faster, and could have given us the quick version of fall of Fouquet while still also having enough time to move onto giving all the other plot points a satisfying resolution.

            In other words—I wanted a return of the Dumas from the first two books in the series, back when the story rushed continually from one adventure to another.  What happened to that author?

Final Evaluation

            As I’ve been mentioning all along now, the last 4 books in the English translation make up one single volume in the original French.  As I’ve been reading these last 4 books, I have been holding off on a final judgment of the story until I saw how everything would pay off in the final chapter.  Now that I’ve read the whole thing, I have to confess myself slightly disappointed with the story.

            There are, however, one or two things about the whole story that redeem it somewhat.

            First of all, for us history geeks, there’s all the real history integrated into these stories.  I learned a ton about 17th century France, and the early reign of Louis XIV, and the figures at his court from reading these books. 

            Secondly, it’s important to remember these books were originally published as installments in the French newspapers.  In the newspapers, Dumas kept the Three Musketeers series going for 6 years from 1844 to 1850.

            I’m generally fascinated by stories told in serialization that stretch out over periods of years.  (One of the reasons that, in my youth, I was attracted to the long, complicated continuity sagas of comic books over at Marvel and DC).  Back in the 19th century, serialized novels were like the comic books (or serialized cable TV shows) of their day.  Whether or not the story has a satisfying end is ultimately less impressive than the ability of the author to keep bringing the readers back week after week.

The Real Life Legend of the Man in the Iron Mask

          As you probably already know, there really was a real-life Man in the Iron Mask.  Wikipedia has a whole article on this mystery (W), which is interesting reading.

            The publisher’s introduction to my volume (Harper Press Paperback, 2012), also includes some interesting theories:

            Some historians now think it more likely that the real man in the mask was Louis’s biological father. King Louis XIII had been estranged from Louis XIV’s mother for some 20 years when she fell pregnant, so it seems reasonable to conclude that she had been impregnated by a lover. The hypothesis is that the biological father had been sent abroad but decided to return, perhaps to extort money from his son, Louis XIV. As a result, he was arrested and imprisoned to prevent anyone from finding out the truth as it would have meant that Louis XIV was not the rightful heir to the throne, but rather his uncle. (p. ix—publisher’s introduction)

            The publisher’s introduction also goes on to make the astute observation that the fact that there was so much speculation over the mysterious man’s identity shows that the obsession with conspiracy theories is not uniquely a modern phenomenon.

The Title and My Expectations

          Although this book didn’t really match my expectations, I suppose that’s not all Dumas’s fault.  After all, he didn’t title his book The Man in the Iron Mask—that’s just the English translation.

            As always, Dumas is integrating real history with fiction.  Given the Hollywood versions of this story, I was expecting this book would explain how the man got out of the iron mask.  But in fact, Dumas was more interested in explaining how the man got into the iron mask in the first place.

            The publisher, however, I blame.  The publisher’s introduction (Harper Press Paperback, 2012) gave me false expectations of how this story was going to play out:

            “Dumas’ version clearly influenced Mark Twain, who adapted the basic idea into his novel The Prince and the Pauper (1882).  Twain imagined what events might unravel if an English prince and a London pauper accidentally swapped places because they happened to be identical in appearance. Dumas and Twain thus invented the ‘mistaken identity’ or ‘substitution’ genre of novel, which has seen various subsequent manifestations.” (p. ix—publisher’s introduction)

            Doesn’t that make it sound like the main focus of the whole book is going to be about the substitution?  You’d never get any hint from this that in fact the substitution of kings doesn’t even last the morning before it’s discovered, and then that plot thread is over.

The Game of Thrones Treatment

          In an earlier post, I tentatively recommended the Three Musketeers  series as one of my candidates for a book series deserving of the Game of Thrones treatment.  Given the fact that I hadn’t even finished this series at that time, that was probably a stupid thing to do.

            Now that I’ve finished the whole series, I can come back to the question to speak with a bit more authority. 

            The first two books in the series, The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, are quick-paced, action-packed, and would easily make the transition to a TV series.  (That is, assuming you had the budget for all the set pieces and battle scenes.)

            The genre switches when you get to the 3rd book, and it becomes more of a historical court drama/soap opera.  Of course, there’s an audience for this kind of show as well (witness The Tudors, for example).  The difficulty would be in transferring the same audience from the first two seasons over to the 3rd season (I’m assuming one book a season), but possibly you could get away with it.

            The last 4 books have a lot of fat in them which would need to be trimmed down, and the pacing would need to be completely re-worked.  But screen writers are good at adapting books like this.  Assuming a talented writing team adapting these books, I think it just might work. 

            But on the other hand, I’m sure there are those who would say why bother with a faithful adaptation?  You could just take the basic idea of gallant sword-fighting musketeers having adventures in a quasi-historical setting, and run with that.  It’s my understanding that the latest BBC series (W) has decided to go that route, although I haven’t actually seen the new show myself.

Other Stuff

* I’ve been saying this all along, but the morality of the protagonists in this book is really pretty appalling.  Including the battles around Belle-Isle, and the entire brigade of soldiers killed in the cave, Porthos and Aramis seem to have no problem in causing hundreds of people to die just to make good their own escape.  It makes it all the harder for me to sympathize much with the pathos the book tries to work up from the death of Porthos.  What about all those soldiers Porthos killed?  Where are the scenes mourning their deaths?

* Having brought up the 1998 Man in the Iron Mask movie, I suppose I should link to a very insightful review of that same film HERE.  (Even though the movie has very little to do with the plot of the actually book, it’s an entertaining review of all the movie’s faults nonetheless.)

Link of the Day
Violence and Dignity

The Man in the Iron Mask by Alexandre Dumas (The 6th book in Three Musketeers series): Book Review

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Louise de la Valliere by Alexandre Dumas

(Book Review)

Background

            And now I come to the fifth book in the Three Musketeers series, after having previously read through The Three Musketeers, Twenty Years After, The Vicomte de Bragelonne, and Ten Years Later.

           

            (As I have noted previously, the whole series is only 3 volumes in the original French, but the convention in English has been to divide the lengthy 3rd volume into 4 separate books, so in the original French this would be simply chapters 141-208 of the 3rd book.  As I am downloading these books off of Project Gutenberg, I am following their divisions [LINK HERE])

            Some of what I have to say in this review is a repeat of what I said in my reviews of the previous volumes, but so be it.

The Review

            The surprising thing about the first two volumes, The Three Musketeers and Twenty Years After, is that their constant action and quick pacing made them seem like modern day paperbacks instead of old Victorian era classics.

            However, by this point in the series, that quick pacing has disappeared, and the story now moves at a tortuously slow pace.

            (I don’t know what happened along the way, but my best guess is that by this point Dumas had realized what a cash cow this series was, and he was trying to spin it out for as long as possible.  The whole series was originally serialized in the French newspapers, and Dumas got paid by the installment.  He also had financial problems all his life, so it’s not hard to imagine.)

            The writing style—the prose descriptions, the dialogue, et cetera—are all still highly readable, but for many chapters at a time the story just feels like it’s going nowhere.

            There’s also a lot of needless dialogue.  What will often happen is that two characters will sit around discussing a plan.  Then they will enact their plan.  Then afterwards they will talk about the results of their plan.  This means that the reader has to sit through the same thing recounted three times.

            Another characteristic of the dialogue is that very few characters are direct with each other.  Typically, when two characters have something to communicate to each other, one character will begin by alluding to the new information only in very vague terms, while the other character will usually act particularly dense and not catch the allusion.  In most of the dialogues, it takes a couple of pages for any character to get around to communicating the substance of their message.

            This is particularly irritating to the reader when it’s drawing out something the reader already knows anyway, since a fair amount of the dialogue is just recounting events that the reader has already witnessed.

            As a result, I would classify The Three Musketeers, and Twenty Years After as page turners, but Louise de la Valliere as a page stopper. 

            I wouldn’t go so far as to say it was a bad reading experience, but it was not the kind of book that encouraged me to keep flipping the pages.  I would typically read through a couple pages, realize that the story wasn’t going anywhere for a while, and decide I that I had had enough for the day.  And so I finished this book in little nibbles instead of long reading sessions.

            And yet, for all that, I’m still enjoying this series.

            I’m enjoying the large cast of interesting characters, historical and fictional, that Dumas has by this time fleshed out.

            I’m enjoying the complexity of the story, and the many different plot and subplots that Dumas is juggling.

            And I’m continuing to enjoy how much real history is integrated into this story.

            So I’m still glad I’m reading this series, even if I have am reading it at a slower pace then before.

            And then, finally, in the last few chapters of this book, stuff actually begins to happen, and then it all becomes exciting once again.

            I’m optimistic that the last book in this series, The Man in the Iron Mask, will pick up the pace even more.  There are a number of plot that have been slowly simmering for sometime now, and hopefully they’ll all get a decent pay off in the last book.  But this all remains to be seen—I’ll have to see what happens when I actually read it.

Other Notes

* As I’ve been reading these books, I’ve been using Wikipedia to help me sort out the fact from the fiction, since many of the characters in this story are real historical people with biographical pages on Wikipedia.  Of course, in many cases, finding out the biographical information about these characters also alerts me to what their final historical fate will be.  Which may arguable spoil the story somewhat.  (For example, I already know the historical fate of Louise de la Valliere (W) is not going to end well.)

            Although I’m curious as to what will happen in this story, I’ve tried to protect myself from Internet spoilers specifically about Dumas’s fiction.  However, in a compromise with myself, I allow myself to read anything which is a matter of historical record.  Even though I know some of the history now, it will still be interesting to see how Dumas deals with it in his fiction.

            (The reading of these novels in the pre-wikipedia age would, of course, have been a much different experience.)

* In my review of Twenty Years After, I expressed some ambivalence about its seemingly pro-royalist position.  In particular, I referenced a passage from chapter 24 of Twenty Years After in which Athos gives his son Raoul a speech about how the idea of monarchy is always to be revered and protected, despite any personal mistakes the king may make.

            The interesting developments in Louis de la Valliere, however, are now making me wonder if Athos’s pro-royalist attitude in Twenty Years After was simply a set-up for his subsequent disillusionment in this volume. 

            In chapter 58 of Louise de la Valliere, Athos expresses his disappointment to King Louis XIV directly, saying “All my life through I have maintained that kings are above all other men, not only from their rank and power, but from their nobleness of heart and their true dignity of mind.  I never can bring myself to believe that my sovereign, he who passed his word to me, did so with a mental reservation”.

            This is a far cry from the pro-royalist speeches he made in Twenty Years After.

            (And Dumas must have already been planning at least some of this as far back as Twenty Years After, because the characters of Louis de la Valliere and Comte De Guiche (W) were both introduced back in Twenty Years After, and they are both historical figures whose character arcs were already pre-determined.)

            So, I may have been a little hasty in my rush to judgment on Dumas.

            (Of course, this still doesn’t explain why King Charles I was overly romanticized, and why the English Republicans were all portrayed as vicious thugs.)

Link of the Day

Invasion as a Marketing Problem

and from the Asahi Shinbun:  INTERVIEW: Key negotiator in Okinawa's return amazed at continued U.S. presence

Recalling his first visit to Okinawa in 1967 when negotiations had begun in earnest, Halperin said: "At that time, the American military did not believe there were bases on Okinawa. They believed 'Okinawa' was a military base. Literally, they viewed the whole island as one military base."
He added that Okinawans "were viewed as people who were unfortunate enough to live on an American military base."

Louise de la Valliere by Alexandre Dumas (The 5th book in The Three Musketeers series): Book Review

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Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas

(Book Review)

            This is the fourth volume in the Three Musketeers series.  (See also The Three Musketeers,  Twenty Years After  and The Vicomte de Bragelonne).

            As I mentioned in my review of The Vicomte de Bragelonne, in the original French publication there are only 3 books total, but in English the final 3rd book is split into 4 volumes.  So this was originally chapters 76-140 of the 3rd book.  (Divisions differ slightly from publisher to publisher, but I downloaded this book from Project Gutenberg—LINK HERE, so I’m following their divisions.)

            I should also mention that the title of this book is inaccurate and needlessly confusing.  This does not take place 10 years after the preceding volume, but rather picks up immediately where The Vicomte de Bragelonne left off.  The title for this volume comes from the fact that in the original French publication, the whole 3rd book was entitled The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later.  The title was split across two separate books in the English translation, but it means that both books together take place 10 years after the events described in Twenty Years After.  Or in other words, 30 years after the events described in original Three Musketeers. 

            Did I manage to describe that without confusing everyone?  Here’s the same information in a table form:

Book		Dates
The Three Musketeers		1625-1628
Twenty Years After		1648-1649
The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Ten Years Later: Chapter 1-269	The Vicomte de Bragelonne: Chapters 1-75	1660
	Ten Years Later: Chapters 76-140	1660-1661
	And two more books yet to read…

The Review

          Much of what I had to say for The Vicomte de Bragelonne holds true for this book as well, only perhaps even more so now.

            The original 4 Musketeers barely figure at all in this volume.  They pop up from time to time, but they are now minor characters in their own series.

            The story changes focus so often that it’s hard to tell who the main characters are supposed to be.  One character will be followed for several chapters, only for their story to be abruptly dropped as the narrator changes over to another character.  But broadly speaking, the story is now all about the nobles and courtiers of the court of Louis XIV, and the young King Louis XIV himself. 

            Instead of being tightly focused, the story keeps expanding outwards and outwards.  More characters, plots, intrigues, and romances are constantly being brought into the story.

            There’s political intrigue as the struggle between the superintendent Fouquet and the finance minister Colbert.

            There’s religious intrigue as the new leader of the Jesuits is chosen (and even hints of a rivalry between the Jesuits the Pope.)

            And there are several love triangles and romances.

            I’m not sure whether Alexandre Dumas is going to provide a satisfying conclusion to all the plots he’s introduced, but at the moment I’m loving how ambitious this story is.  (I’ve always loved epic stories, and this definitely seems to be developing into quite an epic.)

            Although the book at times reads like an overly-dramatic romantic novel, a trip over to Wikipedia reveals that much of the book is actually (loosely) based on real historical fact.  Many parts of the book that I thought were pure invention turned out to be at least partly true.  For example, the Duke of Buckingham really was sent away from France for acting scandalously during Prince Philip and Princess Henrietta’s wedding (W).  The Comte de Guiche really did have a rumored affair with Princess Henrietta (W).  In fact most of the characters in this book are loosely based on real historical figures. 

            If you’re a fan of historical fiction,  all this increases the interest of the book even more.

            (Admittedly not everyone is a fan of historical fiction.  Even among fellow history buffs, I meet people who say they prefer to just read straightforward history rather than have to sort out the truth from fiction.  But I actually prefer learning history from stories, and then once my interest in the period has been piqued, I enjoy doing my research afterwards to find out how much of the story is true.)

            Against all this, however, I do have two complaints about the book:

            1). The pacing of the book is a little bit too slow for me.  In contrast to the fast pace of the original Three Musketeers, Alexandre Dumas is now clearly taking his time to set up the story, and the various scandals and love triangles are all set-up very slowly.  Characters will spend several chapters admiring someone else from a distance, or spend a long time only hinting at deeper feelings.  Whenever a new courtroom scandal finally does emerge, then the pay-off is good. But the getting there can be tedious.

            2). Although it’s difficult to decide who the main characters are in this epic tale, Raoul and Louise de Valliere are clearly meant to be the most sympathetic characters.  But Alexandre Dumas put in too much effort into making them good, virtuous, and innocent, and the result is that they are the most boring characters in the whole story.  As a result, I have trouble working up any interest in their storylines.

Link(s) of the Day 

Noam Chomsky (2014) "How to Ruin an Economy; Some Simple Ways" 
And from cracked.com 5 Dick Moves Your Bank Pulls (You Won't Believe Are Legal)
Which, speaking of how banks annoy me, this also summarizes my own opinion.

And, from Salon.com, an excerpt from the new Bart Ehrman book: Did Jesus think he was God? New insights on Jesus’ own self-image

Ten Years Later by Alexandre Dumas  (The 4th book in The Three Musketeers series): Book Review

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