Yay! Not only have I finished reading this behemoth, which took me forever (not entirely the fault of the book, I should make clear), but I’ve even, finally, finished writing a review of it!
But, first, a WARNING! – I always try to keep my reviews as spoiler-free as possible, but I found that really hard this time. I have still refrained from any detailed or specific spoilers about the plot, particularly its conclusion. However, I have assumed that after 173 years of high publicity, literally hundreds of stage, film, TV, graphic novel and musical adaptations (IMDB lists 200 screen works with “Monte Cristo” in the name; some are allusions or individual episodes or coincidence, but then there’ll be a bunch of other adaptations without that specific name in the title (Japanese versions ususally call it something else, for instance); even Wikipedia lists nearly 40 notable ones), not to mention sequels, prequels, and reimaginings, in dozens of languages (there have been 116 years of Japanese adaptations alone!)… well, I’m hoping that the broad, general, no-names-mentioned outline of what the novel is about will not be a spoiler for most of you. That said, if you want to remain completely, utterly, unimpeachably unspoiled and an entirely blank slate for your first reading of the book, read no further! And, I’d suggest, go and live in a cave somewhere until you get around to reading it, because otherwise I don’t know how you’re going to avoid these spoilers…
Occasional Mumbling 