The Man in the Iron Mask

The book has very little to do with the man in the iron mask. Maybe 5% of the story revolves around him. The four musketeers also play little to no role in this story. And the little role they play has nothing to do with their characters from the first book. So don't expect any sort of continuation here.

Here I will summarize the “plot”, what actually is the first 5% of the book, and it should be clear why I disliked it. I will mark it as spoiler, because although being just the introduction, it is the only part of interest in this story.

- Aramis finds out that the King has a twin brother in prison that no one knows about but him.- Being a good catholic, ~30 years later he decides to free him and replace him for the King. He was getting kind of bored, and there was no TV at the time.- With much effort he manages to gain access to the King, drug him and make the trade. He has done the impossible, because the King is very heavily guarded.- Oh, d'Dartagnan is now the captain of the Musketeers.- After replacing the King, he tells to the "First Minister" (equivalent of doing that) what he has done, and that it would only work if he was on board with the plan.- The First Minister says: "Oh, how marvelous! I always wanted to dethrone the King for no apparent reason and serve an impostor, with no government experience, in his place! I particularly appreciate the fact that you already went to the trouble of doing all of that without ever questioning me on how I would feel on the matter! NOT! " - What he actually does is to give Aramis a head start while he fetches the real King from prison and issues an arrest order for him.- Oh, Aramis managed to make Porthos, his unwittingly accomplice in all of this.

What follows is the pursuit of Porthos and Aramis by the authorities and a LOT of boring scenes with Athos and his son. And I do mean a LOT. And BORING. Other scenes of notebook:

- Athos's son decides to kill himself because the women he loves only likes him as a friend. Athos says that if does that, he would kill himself as well. The son commits suicide, Athos does so as well.- Porthos and Aramis make a last stand in a cave, managing to kill over 50 soldiers by themselves.- Porthos the died of a hearth attack. He was fat fuck.- Aramis is captured by a ship of the King's navy. He is then sent back to France and executed for his crimes. NOT. - What actually happened was that upon arriving on the ship, he asks to talk to the captain, and tells him to send him to Spain. The captain does so. Why? Whoa, calm down there with our though questions Mr. Scientist.- The King decides to arrest that guy, the "First Minister", because he was giving way too many parties in the King's honor. I actually sympathized with the motive, not that he deserved to be arrested for that, but it was incredible foolish of him.- D'Artagnan dislikes this decision of the King. He says so. The King responds "I'm the King, the will of God on Earth. Just shut up, bend over and take it. Or leave this place at once."- D'Artagnan, being a Gascon (someone hot tempered), a honorable man, the Captain of the most elite guard of soldiers of the country, probably the best sword fighter in Europe, pull out his sword and challenges the king for a duel and says he will kill him if he does not take back all the nonsense he said. NOT! - Actually, he just pulled his pants down, bent over and took it.- 3 years later, d'Artagnan died in battle.- These last two events were in sequence. He decided to be a little bitch, then the book skipped 3 years, he wen to war and won the battle. But then a stray canon bullet hit him and he died.

After reading The Phoenix Guards, I laughed a lot harder at Iron Mask than I otherwise would have.

Okay, I knew that this wasn't a happy story, but I hadn't realized it was quite so depressing. I also hadn't realized just how much of the story falls under “what happened AFTER the climax.”