The Three Musketeers

Buckle-your-swash and get ready for a rousing action-adventure, courtesy of Alexandre Dumas and Simon Vance. When hapless d'Artagnan arrives in Paris, his Gascon pride is wounded, and he takes on duels with each of the king's best swordsmen, the three musketeers, Athos, Porthos, and Aramis. Admiring the courage of the green youth, the four become inseparable. The story revolves around the musketeers' attempts to thwart Cardinal Richelieu as he plots the undoing of the King Louis XIII and Queen Anne. Simon Vance's performance is period-perfect. His characterizations are passionate, full-blooded, and memorable. Vance turns historical events into the background for romance and derring-do, sprinkled with healthy doses of irreverence, wit, and irony. Friendship, loyalty, and honor make this all-for-one-and-one-for-all listening. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine


This classic adventure epic is presented here in a compact, affordable production. The double-tracking is slightly inconvenient but is overcome by the narrator's superb reading. Page's flawless pronun-ciation of the numerous French words blends with his formal British English to give color and credence to the grandiloquent language of the translation. His characterizations are equally well performed. The characters emerge richly faceted: the nefarious Lady DeWinter; the pious but fallible Athos; the haughty, boisterous Porthos. The listener is carried through the romantic verbiage by this energetic, exciting performance. J.J.F. (c)AudioFile, Portland, Maine

October 10, 2016
The picaresque adventures of the young d’Artagnan, who strives to become a musketeer in service of the king, unfold in a visually vibrant adaptation of Dumas’s novel. It’s no easy task to condense such a sprawling story into a picture book, and readers may have trouble keeping up with the swerves of the plot. French artist André uses airy, watercolorlike effects to create dramatic visuals suggestive of stills from an animated action film. It’s an ambitious retelling, but most readers will probably benefit from outside research or conversations with adults to better understand the context and stakes of the story. Ages 8–11.