Published in: 1844
Pages: 1276 (no, that is not a typo, there is over 1200 pages in this book)
Edition: E-book

Description: (From Goodreads.com)
Thrown in prison for a crime he has not committed, Edmond Dantès is confined to the grim fortress of If. There he learns of a great hoard of treasure hidden on the Isle of Monte Cristo and he becomes determined not only to escape, but also to unearth the treasure and use it to plot the destruction of the three men responsible for his incarceration.

My review:
This book took me about 9 months to get through, though a lot of that time was spent avoiding reading it, because it was just so long. The book had all these parts that made me think “is this relevant?” but then it’s always revealed, later on, that yes, it is indeed relevant and completely important to the story. Like when Monte Cristo is in Rome with Ferdinand, I read that while at a football game (I had been dragged to against my will and clearly, I am not a sporting person) and spent the entire time thinking that yes, this is interesting, but relevance?
Only to find out, later on in the story, that these characters are indeed important and these events shape the future events of the story.
it’s an intricately woven tale, crafted so well that you hardly see the events coming together until the author actually reveals things, which just throws you. It’s brilliant.
I adored it.
If it wasn’t for the length, I would have probably devoured it in hours. I really wouldn’t mind reading it again ,but again, the length is off-putting.

It is a tale of revenge, something that many of us wish we could do ourselves to our enemies. It gives us the underdog, the poor Dantes, who gets his comeuppance, who gets the better of his enemies, who basically gets all this fortune of gold and rubs it into his enemies faces that he is better than them and they never even realised until the end who he really was.

Almost a week after I finished the book, the movie was shown on tv. The 2002 one with Guy Pierce in it? Yeah, well I eagerly spent my Saturday night sitting at home, waiting for the movie to start.
It was 2 hours of pure disappointment.
After reading this brilliant story, to see it basically reduced to the bare minimum, it was atrocious. Not only did they get most of the facts wrong, they did it in such a way that it made you wonder if the screenwriter even bothered to read the original. He paired Valentine with Monte Cristo, who was apparently the love of his life as well. I was like, um, WHAT? No freaking way. Valentine was the daughter of Nortier, who didn’t even get a mention in the film, if memory serves right, and she was in love with Maximillion, who also was a no-show in the movie. In the movie, she was the wife of Guy Pierce’s character Ferdinand, and represented the love of Monte Cristo’s life. AHHH SO MANY WRONGS HERE. I spent the entire 2 hours yelling at the tv at how wrong this all was.
So very wrong.

So I guess the morale of this story was, if you read the book, do NOT watch the movie. Or prepare for 2 hours of yelling at the tv about how incredibly wrong Hollywood got this movie.

Final review:
The count of monte cristo rating: 9/10. Honestly, it is such a well written, well crafted story of betrayal and deceit and redemption through revenge, that I just loved it. The length is seriously the only thing that bugged me throughout. I mean, I got to the 600 page mark, and usually by then I’d be more or less done or nearly done, but with this book, it was like, 600 pages, I’m only just barely halfway at the moment.
But really, to cut anything from this story would be to diminish it, and it would not be as great as it truly is.
Would I re-read it?  I really hope to one day. Perhaps when I’ve gotten through my mountain of classic books to read, I’ll have time to read this one through again, and marvel at the small details that make the story what it is.
Who would I recommend it to? Really, everyone should read this book. They don’t write like this anymore, not with this amount of detail. Perhaps a good thing, perhaps a bad thing. All I know is that, even though it’s long and tedious, it’s something that, when finished, you feel such a sense of accomplishment. You also have a smirk on your face, having read some of the greatest “in your face” moments in literature- each time Monte Cristo revealed to his enemy who he really was, I could not stop grinning myself, feeling like I too had gotten my revenge on this evil character.
I just recommend everyone to read this book. It is so…. fantastic. It makes a lot of the other classic books I’ve read look like mindless drivel in comparison, because this is just so intricately woven. It’s an artwork really.

Links:
Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7126.The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
Goodreads free download: http://www.goodreads.com/ebooks/download/7126.The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Count_of_Monte_Cristo
Literature.org (If you want to read it online) http://www.literature.org/authors/dumas-alexandre/the-count-of-monte-cristo/

I look forward to reading more of Dumas’ work. If any of his other epic stories (I say epic, because most of them appear to be of a similar length as this one!) are as well-written and detailed as this, then I am in for a treat.A long treat, but a worthy one. 🙂