Do you have WILLS OF IRON? You'll need them

I love books with only the barest suggestions of plot and a charm that subsides entirely on personality, the so-called plotless book. It works when the author is a master at the craft.

If only The Man in the Iron Mask had no plot. Then at least I could recommend it.

The problem is, it does have a plot, and therein lies its downfall.

Alexandre Dumas wrote The Man in the Iron Mask in 1846 as a follow-up to his wildly successful The Three Musketeers, and his readers then, like readers today, anxiously awaited this sequel after reading about the daring musketeers. And to the disappointment of countless fans, Dumas produces a mediocre novel that fails to hold the audience’s interest and has a plot that is so exquisitely poor that I shudder to review it. But I will, reminding you that I almost didn’t finish the book and only did so in order to review it.


Plot

(There’s no way to summarize the plot without giving spoilers. But since you probably won’t want to read the book anyway, I might as well tell you.)

The three (it’s actually four) musketeers are scattered far and wide; Aramis is a bishop, Porthos is a portly dandy, Athos is a rich noble, and d’Artagnan is captain of the Gascons. Aramis, who has become shrewd and hard, concocts a plan to get rid of the current king, Louis XIV, by replacing him with his twin brother, who has been placed in prison all his life to prevent feuding over the thrown. Aramis and Philippe (the twin prince) succeed in replacing Louis with Philippe…for about an hour. Due to Aramis’s misjudgment of a friend, Philippe is discovered and returns to prison, wearing an iron mask; and Aramis, his plan failed, runs off with Porthos to an island fortress. The last half of the book is spent describing the demise of the ex-musketeers.

Reading the first chapter (in which Aramis explains his plan to Philippe), I fondly imagined a great story ahead of me; something like A Prisoner of Zenda (which I’ve read so many times the covers are falling off), where a loveable commoner is switched with a contemptible king, and the entanglements that occur, followed by the realization that the fake king is better than the real one. So I was both enraged and frustrated when I was cheated out of the great story I imagined and instead given a half-cooked yarn about the painful downfalls of the individual heroes I love. Philippe disappears after he is sent back to prison; and the rest of the book details Athos’s son’s ruin, Athos’s decline of sadness, Porthos’s slow death at the hands of Aramis, Aramis’s corruption in the political system, and similarly unsatisfying ends to the band who pledged to be “all for one and one for all.” These events seem unnecessary (not to mention painful). But at least they actually involve the main characters. Right after Philippe’s recapture, all the ex-musketeers disappear and we follow Athos’s son and his assignment to Africa. For several chapters we know nothing about where our heroes are or what they’re doing.

Why does Dumas bother to introduce the whole “king-switching” idea at all, if he doesn’t carry it out to completion? For that matter, why does Dumas bother to write this agonizing sequel at all? Anyone who has read The Three Musketeers does NOT want to hear about their heroes decaying into misery or death. At least not without a purpose. And none of them die a glorious death, fighting for their country, defeating evil, the heroes that we always knew they were. No, each one dies (or lives on) dismally and without any honor or purpose. To add insult to injury, they arrive at these ends by fighting against each other on opposite sides, and even killing on another. HELLO!! Depression city!

What makes matters worse is that the first half of the book, which could be its redeeming factor, is made up primarily of Porthos’s problems with clothes. These scenes, though humorous, are not remotely worth my time. It does serve to take away the depressing tone a little, but it seems crassly ironic as a precursor to the tragic second half of the book.

Is the story completely worthless? No. The scenes in the beginning with Porthos and the tailors are clever and subtly witty; and the scene in which Philippe and the king meet in the throne room is stunning in its power and drama. Other scenes are also occasionally well-conceived and interesting. And the idea of a man condemned to wear an iron mask over his offending face for the rest of his life is romantic (well, yeah, I’ve always had a thing for masks ever since Phantom). But these can hardly make up for the uninspired, uninspiring story that dominates most of the book.


Characters

I waited and waited for Philippe to be revealed as a hero worthy of the reader’s time. Again, I imagined something like A Prisoner of Zenda, whose hero, Rudolf, was incredibly noble, honorable, and likeable in his zeal and kindness. But Dumas never developed the character of Philippe, leaving us mildly disappointed but not really sad when Philippe is sent back to facelessness.

Aramis, who was possibly my favorite from Three Musketeers, has been twisted into a cold, hard ambitious man, affectionate at times to Philippe but for the most part calloused and cynical. What was Dumas thinking? Not about the readers, obviously…

The other characters in the story – Porthos, Athos, Raoul, Mdm. Valliere – had potential but they had hardly five minutes notice and then they were gone or in the background. Some authors can develop minor characters with just a few sentences and then let the rest of the story expand them. However, the characters I just named are, or should be, main characters. They’re not. What’s more, there isn’t a single one that I gave a flip about; they’re simply too unrealistic and theatrical to be believable.

All in all, the characterization is shoddy and inferior to Dumas’s previous books. You can’t work up any emotion to care about these people, much less let the caring flow naturally from the portrayal of the characters. After all, how much can you feel for a cardboard guy? Not much.


Writing style

Dumas’s style and tone haven’t changed much, except to become more sloppy. Anyone who has read Three Musketeers or Count of Monte Cristo will recognize the decidedly French style of writing, even when translated into English; the dry, almost incomprehensible humor; the sidetracked interactions between minor characters; and the posh, upper-class aura. In Man in the Iron Mask, however, the writing feels heavy and unimaginative; obviously this doesn’t help the plodding story or slapdash characters at all.

While Dumas has always wandered a little bit, his meanderings in this book seem excessive; it was truly amazing how small an amount of story development or description could be stretched out into paragraphs and even chapters. The brilliance of his skill as a writer was usually hidden by the carelessness of his implementation; it’s the details as well as the major points that flaw the style. Often the writing was graceful and smooth, but the scene it described was pointless and unimportant. All of these elements – plot, characters, and writing – are connected, and the mediocrity of one can mean the downfall of all.

I wasn’t completely bored by the writing style the whole time I was reading. Only about half the time.


Message

When I was reading the back cover of the book (which of course sang its praises), I was shocked that whoever wrote the summary felt that the hopeless mire of the message was exciting and meaningful. That guy needs a good stiff drink. (Or maybe he already had one.) Man in the Iron Mask has a gloomy, “what’s worth living for” theme that will dishearten you if the inadequate plot doesn’t. Somehow Dumas’s worldview of “hope being the sweetest word” has changed into something like “you’re going to die anyway so why not now?”. Aramis’s and the king’s deviousness are hardly the inspiring messages that the editor seemed to think they were. The suffering, cruelty, and/or death of all the main characters in the book are very depressing both from a literary and an emotional standpoint. Since their deaths are without meaning or reason, we are left with a bleak, doomed feeling that all their valiant declarations and friendships from The Three Musketeers were either all for nothing or a sham.


Final thoughts

This subpar offering from Dumas is not worth a true reader’s time or effort. Although it isn’t completely awful, The Man in the Iron Mask is up there on the “Undeserving Classics” list along with Wuthering Heights and Ben-Hur. It’s so sad that a great novel like The Three Musketeers has such a pathetic sequel, and written by the same author too. I’m glad I can say I read this book from cover to cover, but I’m sorry I wasted so much of my time reading it when I could have been improving my mind with other good books. I can say without a doubt – not recommended.