Thoughts for Thursday: The Power of Ancestry

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Day two of the Dark Remnants promo!

The first book in my Street Games series, Dark Remnants, is FREE today on Amazon! Hop on over and download a free digital copy if you don't have one yet. This is the last day, so do it before the price jumps back to normal!

Might as well while it's free, right? 

And I'd appreciate any help spreading the word. The more downloads I get, the higher I climb on the charts. So thanks in advance for all your support, and I hope you all enjoy the book!

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE FREE BOOK!

Here are some tweets if you feel so inclined!

"...steel in her spine. This is the woman I think we need to see more of in fiction...." Download Dark Remnants FREE 2day!...
— L K Hill (@lkhillbooks) January 29, 2014

"It's so rare to come across a female lead with so much guts, & drive." Dark Remnants is FREE on Amazon today! http://t.co/AhUe3MeCFu
— L K Hill (@lkhillbooks) January 29, 2014

Looking 4 gr8 #crimefiction? Dark Remnants (Street Games #1) is #FREE on Amazon 2day!Hop over & download ur copy now! http://t.co/UbqLSTspab
— L K Hill (@lkhillbooks) January 29, 2014

Thoughts for Thursday

Thoughts for Thursday is a new feature hosted by Musings on Fantasia and LKHill.  In this meme, we share thoughts or quotes that we know or have recently come across. Each week there is a specific subject or theme. These can be quotes from books, quotes by famous people, (quotes by YOU, perhaps ;D). Anything from anywhere is game, though we do ask that you keep your quote to a few sentences at most. Don't quote, for example, entire passages of a book or essay. These can be funny quips, cool sayings, hair-raising antidotes, movie lines, any kind of quote you can think of!

Just have fun, collect awesome sayings by awesome people, and try to be inspired!

Today's theme is The Power of Ancestry.

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Free Crime Fiction Books Today!

Guess what, guess what? 

The first book in my Street Games series, Dark Remnants, is FREE today on Amazon! Hop on over and download a free digital copy if you don't have one yet. 

Might as well while it's free, right? 

And I'd appreciate any help spreading the word. The more downloads I get, the higher I climb on the charts. So thanks in advance for all your support, and I hope you all enjoy the book!

HERE'S THE LINK TO THE FREE BOOK!

Here are some tweets if you feel so inclined!

"It's so rare to come across a female lead with so much guts, & drive." Dark Remnants is FREE on Amazon today! http://t.co/AhUe3MeCFu
— L K Hill (@lkhillbooks) January 29, 2014

Looking 4 gr8 #crimefiction? Dark Remnants (Street Games #1) is #FREE on Amazon 2day!Hop over & download ur copy now! http://t.co/UbqLSTspab
— L K Hill (@lkhillbooks) January 29, 2014

Dark Remnants, Book 1 of Street Games, is FREE today on Amazon! Download your copy here: http://t.co/UbqLSTspab #Freebooks #crimefiction
— L K Hill (@lkhillbooks) January 29, 2014

Goodreads Description:

In the most dangerous city in the country, one controlled by a sadistic gang called the Sons of Ares, Kyra Roberts is searching the deep places for someone…

Kyra has come to Abstreuse city to find someone she’s lost, but walking the underbelly—a dark alley system residents call the Slip Mire—even in disguise, is rife with dangers. Kyra must stay on her toes if she intends to live. After crossing paths several times with the same detective, she wonders if his work and hers might be connected.

Gabe Nichols has worked homicide in Abstreuse for three years. Dead prostitutes and gang violence are part of the night shift. When a woman who looks like a street junkie but acts like an intellectual saves his life, he’s intrigued. Another woman shows up at his crime scene, and Gabe’s instincts kick into high gear when she clams up. Two cases involving strange women who won’t tell what they know are too coincidental.

If Gabe and Kyra can’t find a way to collaborate, they may not live to see the sunrise. Doomed, like so many others, to become gray, unmarked graves in a forgotten fracture of the Slip Mire.

Happy Reading! 

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Teaser Tuesday: Soul Screamers

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) “teaser” sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

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This week's teasers come form Rachel Vincent's Soul Screamers series. I'm working my way through it, currently on book 3, My Soul to Keep.

"Why are you trying to brush this off?" This isn't like having a drink at a party or lighting up behind the shop building. We're talking about humans inhaling the toxic life force sucked out of a demon from another world." Quite possibly the weirdest sentence I'd ever said aloud... "And according to your mom, if they survive the addiction--and that's a big if--their scrambled brains'll make Ozzy Osbourne look rational and coherent." (Kindle format, pg. 37)

What are you reading this week?

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Historical Tidbit: Horace Greasley in WWII

Horace Greasley     Source

Do you know...who POW Horace Greasely is?

Horace Greasely was an Englishman who fought in World War II and was taken prisoner in France, marched across the country, and held in a Polish prison camp. Greasely, with the help of a ghost writer, began writing his memoirs in 2008 and published them under the title, Do the Birds Still Sing in Hell. 

In the book, Greasley tells of having an affair with a German girl who interpreted for his captors in the prison camp. He claims he sneaked out of the camp more than two hundred times to see her, and then simply sneaked back in. Often, he would bring things back for his fellow prisoners, such as food or radio parts. Eventually he managed to bring the BBC news to 3,000 prisoners daily.

He also claimed to be the unidentified soldier in a famous World War II picture, standing defiantly against Heinrich Himmler. 

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Thoughts for Thursday: Reaching Goals

Thoughts for Thursday is a new feature hosted by Musings on Fantasia and LKHill.  In this meme, we share thoughts or quotes that we know or have recently come across. Each week there is a specific subject or theme. These can be quotes from books, quotes by famous people, (quotes by YOU, perhaps ;D). Anything from anywhere is game, though we do ask that you keep your quote to a few sentences at most. Don't quote, for example, entire passages of a book or essay. These can be funny quips, cool sayings, hair-raising antidotes, movie lines, any kind of quote you can think of!

Just have fun, collect awesome sayings by awesome people, and try to be inspired!

Today's theme is Reaching Goals. It's still only January. Don't give up yet!

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Historical Tidbit--Creepiest, Craziest, Most Tragic Experiment I've Ever Heard Of!

Found this on Pinterest. Read the story, first. See what you think:

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In 1983, a team of deeply pious scientists conducted a radical experiment in an undisclosed facility. The scientists had theorized that a human without access to any senses or ways to perceive stimuli would be able to perceive the presence of God. They believed that the five senses clouded our awareness of eternity, and without them, a human could actually establish contact with God by thought. An elderly man who claimed to have "nothing left to live for" was the only test subject to volunteer. To purge him of all his senses, the scientists performed a complex operation in which every sensory nerve connection to the brain was severed. Although the test subject retained full muscular function, he could not see, hear, taste, smell, or feel. With no possible way to communicate with or even sense the outside world, he was alone with his thoughts.

Scientists monitored him as he spoke about his state of mind in jumbled, blurred sentences that he couldn't even hear. After four days, the man claimed to be hearing hushed, unintelligible voices in his head. Assuming it was an onset of psychosis, the scientists paid little attention to the man's concerns.

Two days later, the man cried that he could hear his dead wife speaking to him, and even communicate back. The scientists were intrigued, but were not convinced until the subject started naming dead relatives of the scientists. He repeated personal information to the scientists that only their dead spouses or parents would have known. At this point, a sizable portion of the scientists left the study.

After a week of conversing with the dead through his thoughts, the subject became distressed, saying the voices were overwhelming. In every waking moment, his consciousness was bombarded by hundreds of voices that refused to leave him alone. He frequently threw himself against the wall, trying to elicit a pain response. He begged the scientists for sedatives, so he could escape the voices by sleeping. This tactic worked for three days, until he started having severe night terrors. The subject repeatedly said that he could see and hear the deceased in his dreams.

Only a day later, the subject began to scream and claw at his non-functional eyes, hoping to sense something in the physical world. The hysterical subject now said the voices of the dead were deafening and hostile, speaking of hell and the end of the world. At one point, he yelled, "No heaven, no forgiveness" for five hours straight. He continually begged to be killed, but the scientists were convinced that he was close to establishing a connection with God.

After another day, the subject could no longer form coherent sentences. Seemingly mad, he started to bite off chunks of flesh from his arm. The scientists rushed into the test chamber and restrained him to a table so that he could not kill himself. After a few hours of being tied down, the subject halted his struggling and screaming. He stared blankly at the ceiling as teardrops silently leaked across his face. For two weeks, the subject had to be manual rehydrated due to constant crying. Eventually, he turned his head and, despite his blindness, made focused eye contact with a scientist for the first time in the study.  He whispered, "I have spoken with God and he has abandoned us," and his vital signs stopped.

There was no apparent cause of death.

Is that not the craziest thing you've ever heard? I've found mixed reactions to it, some of them bizarre, but mostly, I find it to be tragic. 

Here's the thing: the human brain/consciousness/whatever-you-want-to-call-it has some kind of tunnel to the unconscious. It's this tunnel that allows for things like hypnosis and post-hypnotic suggestions. I also personally believe that this has something to do with our "6th sense" whether you believe that to be something intuitive, supernatural, or religious. 

In the bible, there are examples of both good and evil entities using this pathway to communicate with man. Is pathway itself an evil thing? No, I don't believe it is. However, we mere mortals don't understand it, or how to use it, and so really, we just ought not to mess with it at all. 

I do believe that evil spirits and entities that are interested in controlling us use this pathway to get to us, and I think that's what happened to the poor man in the example above. He opened himself up to this path and, without any perception of reality, anything real to ground him or comfort him, he became afraid, and couldn't figure out how to dispel these dark beings. Maybe we need reality to keep away such entities, and so by turning off his connection to the world, it was no longer possible for him to do so. I don' t know. But these evil forces first taunted, then tormented, then overwhelmed him. Keep in mind that when some dark entity tells you not to pray, or that something good like forgiveness doesn't exist, they are doing it to serve their own selfish purposes--most likely to possess or control their victim--and that the exact opposite is actually true. 

As I said, a truly tragic--and yes, very creepy--story. Very interesting, but very sad. Notice how this was not publicized, nor has any such experiment been attempted again. 

What do you think of this story? Did you have an emotional reaction to it? What conclusions do you draw?

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Crime Tidbit: New Twists in the Zodiac Killer Case

Sketch of the Zodiac killer
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Did you know about the newest development in the infamous, 41-year-old Zodiac case?

The Zodiac killer was one who operated in California in the 1960s and 70s. He targeted men and women, often couples, and got his name because he taunted the police and the press, sending ciphers with supposed clues to his identity in them. Up until 2012, only one of the four ciphers was positively solved.

Now, a hobby code-cracker from California named Corey Starliper believes he's solved another of the killer's puzzles, which has remained a mystery for more than forty years. The cipher, known as the 340-cipher because there are 340 characters, is one he took an interest in soon after learning about the case by way of several books and the 2007 film, Zodiac.

Starliper believed that the number 340 itself was significant. After studying the case, he found that the killer, according to police reports, had some ties to the U.S. Virgin Islands. The area code of the U.S. Virgin Islands, it turns out, is 3-4-0. Playing around with the numbers some more, Starliper found evidence of the exact area codes that the Zodiac's most infamous kills were committed in. Using the numerals 3, 4, he began applying a Caesar code.

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Thoughts for Thursday: Winter

Thoughts for Thursday is a feature hosted by Musings on Fantasia and LKHill.  In this meme, we share thoughts or quotes that we know or have recently come across. Each week there is a specific subject or theme. These can be quotes from books, quotes by famous people, (quotes by YOU, perhaps ;D). Anything from anywhere is game, though we do ask that you keep your quote to a few sentences at most. Don't quote, for example, entire passages of a book or essay. These can be funny quips, cool sayings, hair-raising antidotes, movie lines, any kind of quote you can think of!

Just have fun, collect awesome sayings by awesome people, and try to be inspired!

This week's theme is winter. I figured, why not?

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Crime Tidbit: The Atlas Vampire Case + FREE BOOKS

Happy Wednesday! Quick announcement: Quantum Entanglement is FREE on Amazon today. My first KDP promo. Yea! If you don't have an e-copy of it yet, head over now and download away! The more downloads I get, the further up the lists I climb!

Also, if anyone would be willing to post, tweet, share, or otherwise help spread the word, I'd really appreciate it! I can use all the help I can get. Thanks so much for all your support, and Happy Hump Day!

Free download here: http://www.amazon.com/Quantum-Entanglement-Interchron-Liesel-Hill-ebook/dp/B00F6643SI/ref=sr_1_4?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1389500685&sr=1-4&keywords=quantum+entanglement

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Have you heard...of the Atlas Vampire Case?

I would guess probably not. This one's pretty obscure. In May of 1932, a 32-year-old prostitute was found dead in her flat in a district of Stockholm, Sweden. She hadn't been seen for two days. The last person to see her was her friend who lived downstairs. 

The prostitute, Lilly Lindestrom, was killed by blunt force trauma to he back of her head. She'd lost far more blood than even her injury could account for. It seemed she had been drained. Yet the rest of her apartment was cleaner than it should have been. No prints or forensic evidence of any kind was found at the scene. The really bizarre thing is that her killer seems to have drank some of her blood. Police reports mentioned a gravy ladle full of blood that had obviously been consumed. *shudders*

Other clues in the case? Uh, yeah there really aren't any. This case is more than 80 years old, and most reports of the cases are in Swedish, and have never been translated, which makes it hard to find anything new or deeper on the story. There is some hint of rumor about a bloody rag that was held back by one of the investigators and later found in his possession, but it's difficult to understand if there's even any truth to that.

So, the question remains: A psychopath...or a true vampire? 

What do you think of this case? If you had to guess, what do you think the explanation would be?

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Top Ten Tuesday: 2014 Debuts

**Quick Announcement: On Wednesday and Thursday of this week Quantum Entanglement, book 2 of Interchron, will be FREE on Amazon. I'll announce it again on Wed, but just wanted everyone a heads-up.**

Top Ten Tuesday is an original feature/weekly meme created here at The Broke and the Bookish. This feature was created because we are particularly fond of lists here at The Broke and the Bookish. We'd love to share our lists with other bookish folks and would LOVE to see your top ten lists!

Each week we will post a new Top Ten list  that one of our bloggers here at The Broke and the Bookish will answer. Everyone is welcome to join. All we ask is that you link back to The Broke and the Bookish on your own Top Ten Tuesday post AND add your name to the Linky widget so that everyone can check out other bloggers lists! If you don't have a blog, just post your answers as a comment. Have fun with it! It's a fun way to get to know your fellow bloggers.

Top 10 2014 Debuts I'm Excited For (pictures courtesy of goodreads.com unless otherwise linked)

This one's kind of difficult for me. I don't pay a whole lot of attention to debuts. I just have books on my TBR I want to read, and if they happen to be debuts, great, but I don't specifically look for that. So, I had to kind of hunt for these. They're the ones I found on my TBR list that just happen to be debuts. In no particular order:

8. Sing Sweet Nightingale by Erica Cameron -- Just an interesting sounding premise. It kind of has a greek gods or perhaps angel/demon kind of feel to it.

7. Servants of the Storm by Delilah S. Dawson -- This one seems creepy and like it might be kind of psychological. A fun read all around.

6. A Mad, Wicked Folly by Sharon Biggs Waller -- Well, there's that title, first of all. And who doesn't love a little early twentieth-century scandal every now and again? 

5. Dear Killer by Katherine Ewell -- This starts with a list of rules to live by, which means the story will be structured well. It'll definitely be creepy and psychological, with vast, eerie character sketches. Can't wait!

4. Nil by Lynne Matson -- This seems like Lost meets Robert Heinlein. I hope it's super well-written because it sounds fabulous.

3. The Murder Complex by Lindsay Comings -- A dark, somewhat dystopian thriller where the murder rate is higher than the birth rate. Very intriguing concept.

2. Cruel Beauty by Rosamund Hodge -- I think we'll see this one on a lot of lists. It's getting a lot of hype, and for good reason. Gotta love fairy tale retellings! :D

1. Citadels of Fire by Yours Truly -- Okay, I'm totally cheating putting my book on here. Obviously it's not my debut. It's not even my debut under this pen name. But it IS my HISTORICAL FICTION debut. Plus, it's my blog. So there. :D



That's it for me! What 2014 debuts are YOU looking forward to?

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Historical Tidbit: The Madness of Ivan the Terrible

**Quick Announcement: On Wednesday and Thursday of this week Quantum Entanglement, book 2 of Interchron, will be FREE on Amazon. I'll announce it again on Wed, but just wanted everyone a heads-up.**

Did you know...that Ivan the Terrible was both ingenious and insane?

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Ivan technically became Grand Prince of Russia at the ripe old age of three, after his father died. Of course, he was too young to rule then. His mother, Elena, became regent, completely neglecting little Ivan in favor of trying to hold onto political power. When Ivan was eight, Elena died, most likely poisoned by a rival.

Ivan had the first rival to his own power killed when he was thirteen. He also committed his first rape at that age and by then was regularly torturing and killing small animals. 

The thing is, while Ivan was certifiably insane--matching, if not out-doing Vlad the Impaler in terms of nasty ways to kill people, and number of deaths of his own people--he was also a pretty good leader. 

He curtailed the abuses of the nobility, becoming known as a champion of the lower classes, so many of them revered him. Imperialistically, he took Russia from the small, medieval state it was under his father to a billion acre-empire. He was called gronzy, which being interpreted means Terrible, but the word didn't have the same connotation in his time as it does in ours. Back then it meant great, awe-inspiring, or perhaps formidable.

Ivan after killing his oldest son.
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Of course, he also laid siege to one of his biggest cities, Novgorod, for a month, torturing and killing so many of its citizens that the blood in the streets was ankle deep. 

He had them impaled, beheaded, dismembered alive, deep fried, or torn limb from limb. He carried a staff with a sharp end that he was known to spear people with when they displeased him. 

When he became angry with his oldest son, he hit him in the head with an iron bar, killing him instantly. (Picture at right.)

And yet, he's considered by the Russian people to be one of the greatest rulers in their history. He crowned himself Tsar at age seventeen, and was the first ruler to take that title (Tsar is the Russian word for Caesar). To this day, many revere him, despite the violence and devastation he visited on his own people. 

The dichotomy of Ivan's personality is one of the most grandiose and fascinating we have record of. I suppose it goes to show that there can be a fine line between genius and madness. 

My book, Citadels of Fire, is a historical fiction novel set against the backdrop of the reign of Ivan the Terrible. 

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In a world where danger hides in plain sight and no one aspires to more than what they were born to, Inga must find the courage to break the oppressive chains she’s been bound with since birth. 

Even as a maid in the infamous Kremlin, life in 16th-century Russia is bleak and treacherous. That is, until Taras arrives. Convinced that his mother’s death when he was a boy was no mere accident, he returned from England to discover what really happened. While there, he gains favor from the Tsar later known as Ivan the Terrible, the most brutal and notorious ruler ever to sit upon the throne of Russia. Ivan allows him to take a servant, and to save Inga from a brutal boyar intent on raping her, Taras requests Inga to stay in his chambers. 

Up against the social confines of the time, the shadowy conspiracies that cloak their history, and the sexual politics of the Russian Imperial court, Inga and Taras must discover their past, plan for their future, and survive the brutality that permeates life within the four walls that tower over them all, or they may end up like so many citizens of ancient Russia: nothing but flesh and bone mortar for the stones of the Kremlin wall.

What do you think of Ivan's apparently contradictory aspects? Why do you think this has this happened so often historically?

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Thoughts for Thursday: Ambition

Thoughts for Thursday is a new feature hosted by Musings on Fantasia and LKHill.  In this meme, we share thoughts or quotes that we know or have recently come across. Each week there is a specific subject or theme. These can be quotes from books, quotes by famous people, (quotes by YOU, perhaps ;D). Anything from anywhere is game, though we do ask that you keep your quote to a few sentences at most. Don't quote, for example, entire passages of a book or essay. These can be funny quips, cool sayings, hair-raising antidotes, movie lines, any kind of quote you can think of!

Just have fun, collect awesome sayings by awesome people, and try to be inspired!

Today's theme is Ambition. Ambition can be a negative thing when it becomes ruthless or disregard's human life or emotions, but it can also be a positive force for change and achievement. As this is the beginning of a new year, I figure there's no better time for a little ambition. :D

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Book Review: The Book Thief

I finally got around to reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak in December. Everyone always told me what a great book this is and I felt all left behind because I hadn't read it. Yeah, I totally LOVED it! I haven't seen the film yet, but now I really want to.

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Plot: The Book Thief is the story of a young girl--who shares my name, btw. Yeah, that was weird. I hardly ever find other people with my name--who lives in a poor town right smack in the middle of Nazi Germany during World War II. Liesel's mother gives her up to another couple because she's incapable of caring for her daughter anymore. Liesel already has a lot of emotional baggage because her brother died on the train ride to her new home, and she's haunted by the abandonment of her mother. Liesel bonds with her foster parents in very different ways, and soon embarks on what, for someone in her place and time, is as normal as she could ask for. She goes to school and makes friends with a boy who's always asking if he can kiss her. She never lets him. She helps her parents with their work and gets to know the others in the small town; all their secrets and their lives.

Of course, there are the abnormal things, too. Everyone has to beware of the German soldiers who periodically walk through the town. Eventually a young Jewish man hiding from the Nazi's takes up residents in Liesel's home, hiding in the basement, which increases the danger. And when the sirens go off, everyone in town jumps out of bed in their pjs and heads for the basement bomb shelters.

Then there's Liesel's love of reading. Her father teaches her how, and not only does she swipe a number of books when the opportunities present themselves, but even makes friends with the wife of the wealthy mayor, who has an entire library in her house. Soon enough, Liesel graduates from just reading books to writing her own, complete with illustrations, but Nazi Germany is full of hardship and tragedy that means nothing will stay the same for long...

Writing: This books is written in a different format than most, but it's fabulous! It's narrated, not by the characters themselves, but by death, who crosses paths with Liesel many times in her life. Each time he sees her, he is impressed by her character and emotional stamina; by the fact that he often gathers up the souls of many of those around her, but never her. Telling the story this way is beautiful and tragic, and one you just can't stop reading. Or crying over. I cried off and on throughout the book while reading it, but sobbed uncontrollably through the ending. Yet, I loved it. I told my brothers they all had to read it. It's the kind of story everyone should read once.

In a way, it's the perfect story for me because it combines history and tragedy and beauty in a way no one else has ever done. World War II has never been my favorite historical period, but this is exactly the kind of book that makes me want to re-think my preferences. If you haven't read this, squeeze it into your reading schedule, ASAP. It just might change your life. 

Has anyone else read The Book Thief?

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Book Review: Man in the Iron Mask

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So this is going to be the week of many reviews between my two blogs! I finished several books either during the holidays or right before and haven't had a chance to review them yet. So, I'm playing catch up with my reviews this week.

Right at the end of the year, I realized I hadn't read as many of the classics as I'd wanted to, so I decided to just slip one in under the wire and read Alexander Dumas's Man in the Iron Mask. I've wanted to read this for a while, both because I'd never read Dumas before, and also because I loved the DiCaprio film that came out in 1998 and I was curious as to how it differed from the book.

And the answer is A LOT!

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Plot: So the basic plot of the book was the same: A less-than-desirable king has a secret twin brother in prison, and a group of middle-aged musketeers hatches a plot to put the other sibling, Philippe on the throne in his brother Louis's place.

But, that's where the similarities end. Spoiler alert*** I'm going to talk about how the book is different from the film, and it's pretty much synonymous with spoilers. 1) In the book, Phillipe doesn't have the iron mask on at the beginning of the novel. It isn't forced on him for later. 2) In the book, the plot doesn't work at all, and in the end, the same king--Louis--stays on the throne and his brother is thrown back into prison. End of story. The "good" king, as portrayed in the film doesn't stay on the throne of France. 3) It's really Aramis, more than anyone else who does the entire plot. Porthos plays along, but is pretty clueless all the while, just doing as Aramis tells him. Athos knows nothing at all about it and really isn't involved. D'Artagnon brings down the plot and remains loyal to Louis. Even though the plot is different, D'Artagnon's character and motivations were the most the same in the book. 4) Athos's son, Raoul, doesn't die until near the end of the book. Losing his son is kind of what kills him, rather than being a motivation to join in the coup. 5) There's no D'Artagon being the twins' real father because he had an affair with the queen plot at all. That was entirely a Hollywood thing.

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Ending: Overall, I felt like the book was more about what happened to these musketeers (first introduced in The Three Musketeers) in middle age. The plot to replace the king was over by half way through the book and after that it was about the king trying to kill Aramis and Porthos for their treason, D'Artagnon struggling with his loyalties, and Athos struggling with sending his son off to war. The "man in the iron mask" is actually a trifling part of the story. The biggest change was that three of the four musketeers die by the end. Aramis is the only survivor of this book. While all the deaths were tragic, I actually thought Porthos' death was the most powerful. It was poignant and very well-written. It was probably my favorite part of the book, not because he died, but just because it's the part I had the biggest emotional connection to. Like I said, I think Dumas wrote it more as a way to write about the musketeers in older age than anything else. ***End of Spoilers 

Overall: It wasn't bad for all that; just not what I expected. Over all, did I like it? Was I glad I read it? Yes. I am. But, would I recommend it? Eh. I didn't love it. A big part of that was that it was really hard to read. It's a very old novel and a translation from French, which makes it choppy and almost entirely in passive voice. 

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got through it. Now I can say I've read Dumas. But, unless you enjoy wading through difficult stories, I wouldn't dive in. As for me, I'm open to reading more Dumas, but probably won't pick another of his stories up anytime soon.

And for the record, the film was better. Not because it's a film or because it had Leo in it, but rather just because the story was strong, more compelling, with much more clearly defined themes and morals. I just enjoyed it more. 

Has anyone else read any Dumas?

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