Wednesday, January 18, 2017

The Red Sphinx

   Reading The Red Sphinx, by Alexandre Dumas. Yes, the fellow who penned such classics of adventure as The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo. It's a new book, sort of, in that while most of it was written by Dumas in the 19th century, he never finished it. He didn't finish it because he had already written the ending in a short story called The Dove. The Red Sphinx is the tale that ties together The Three Musketeers and The Dove, a tale about Comte du Moret and Cardinal Richelieu. Naturally, I am reading a translation from the original French, since I don't really parle francais. Except for food, but I digress.

   I'm about 200 pages in, and I am getting bored. I'm shocked by that, because I truly loved Dumas's other works, and read them in unabridged form. But this one seems to be dragging terribly so far. To many sidebar explanations of the situation in Europe at the time, and explanations of how everyone is related to everyone else, and reflective reminders of things that have happened before written in the first person in the author's voice as narrator. I don't recall that being a major part of the other stories, but it has been a good while since I read the previous works.

   Honestly, I am about ready to ditch it and open one of the books I bought myself after Christmas, part of the Eric Flint 163x series.

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