Ten Years Later (The d'Artagnan Romances #4) by Alexandre Dumas

★★★

First, a recap. I am reading the D'Artagnan Romances via the FREE Kindle ebooks available on Amazon:

Book 1: The Three Musketeers
Book 2: Twenty Years After
Book 3a: The Vicomte de Bragelonne
Book 3b: Ten Years Later
Book 3c: Louise de la Vallière
Book 3d: The Man in the Iron Mask

Ten Years Later actually refers to the ten years in between Twenty Years After and The Vicomte de Bragelonne, so really, I think the titles of Books 3a and 3b should have been swapped. While the Vicomte still is not consistently a central character throughout this book, he certainly plays a much bigger role here than in the book that was named after him.

About three-quarters of the way through this book, I lost all my notes, so my review is going to be shorter than I had originally intended... That's probably for the better, actually, since sometimes I think my reviews are too long anyway.

D'Artagnan and Athos make a couple brief appearances in this book, but mostly they are absent. Porthos is practically non-existent. Aramis is the key musketeer in this book, and chapters about him appear intermittently. Mostly they are setting the stage for The Man in the Iron Mask - which I only know from watching the Leonardo DiCaprio movie years ago. Surprisingly, the movie seems to have sufficiently equipped me to understand Aramis's secrets, and honestly, I think if I did not already know where the Aramis storyline is leading, I would be awfully confused about his doings in this book.

So, if this book isn't really about the musketeers, then what's it all about? Like a Jane Austen novel, this book is mostly about the love interests of "the young people". Our beloved musketeers, along with Anne of Austria, play supporting roles for the next generation - the Vicomte de Bragelonne and King Louis XIV, among others. Relationships are complicated by multiple love triangles, and there's a whole lot of drama going on at the court.

I found this book entertaining enough to keep up with it, but not especially compelling. It was easy to put it down and not pick it up again for days at a time.