The Three Musketeers

Reading this after seeing the 90s movie is kind of like reading Go Set a Watchman after reading To Kill a Mockingbird. You thought the musketeers were doing heroic deeds all the time? Actually, they're constantly drinking and getting into pointless fatal streetfighting over extremely minor perceived slights, and trying to seduce married women to get them to pay their gambling debts. I was also surprised that the cardinal isn't even the main villain.

But anyway it's a fun adventure/coming-of-age story that's playful and silly most of the way and then gets surprisingly dark. Because I think it's a shame the industry is so discouraging to longer novels atm, I also want to point out that this one is over 160k words and it needs that space. Interested to read more Dumas now.