Massive, funny, moving, exhaustingly gripping: a melodrama, a revenge drama and, literally, bodice-ripping * Independent on Sunday * There was nobody quicker than Dumas. There were few better. Dumas stands proudly in the pantheon of 19th-century greats. He deserves to be regarded alongside Dickens and Tolstoy as an influential, enduring writer * Glasgow Herald * Dumas's novels are shameless word-guzzlers, big and plush and almost sinfully comfortable If Dumas was a hack, he was a hack with genius. His storytelling never seems the least bit mechanical: no assembly line, then or now, could ever turn out a narrative as joyful, as eccentric, as maddeningly human as The Three Musketeers * New York Times * [ Dumas's books] are fast-moving page-turners; vivid, bombastic and irresistible, with their unforgettable characters and flamboyant splatter of French history * Irish Times * The most popular man of the century... More than French...European; more than European...universal Dumas does dialogue like a scriptwriter on nitrous oxide * Scotland on Sunday *
