Twenty Years After

It's twenty years after the derring-do of THE THREE MUSKETEERS, and our adventurers are tired, but surely not as tired as Frederick Davidson makes them sound. In this reading, the three Musketeers and D'Artagnan sound like bored actors in a bad school play--reciting their lines and rarely interacting with each other, even in the midst of a conversation. The story's intrigue and adventure vanish. Instead, Davidson reads v-e-r-y s-l-o-w-l-y, ends every sentence on a rising note, and inserts inexplicable pauses, which make the listener think that the tape has stopped. Perhaps Davidson had never read Dumas before trying to read his work aloud? Whatever the reason, this version of a classic falls flat. A.C.S. (c) AudioFile 2000, Portland, Maine