Witty Little Knitter

I know some people who do not like this book very much and I understand why. While you certainly start of feeling pity for Dantes because of the injustice he suffered his cold-bloodedness, his conviction to do God's work and willingness to also punish the children for the wrongs their fathers did is...unsettling. (And the novel solves that rather conveniently – even more conveniently than Hey my fellow prison companion is ridiculously rich and leaves me all his money or the fact that all his enemies end up having several skeletons in their closet that end up bringing their downfall – when only those children who are also rather horrible people end up suffering)

Especially towards the very end I felt somewhat uncomfortable with the character on occasions but then came the scene where he visits his old prison cell again and it almost broke my heart. Because that's the moment he remembers everything again and the reader does so as well (forgive me for needing that reminder for something that happened about 1300 bloody pages earlier...) and where he is Edmond Dantes again and not the Count of Monte Cristo and then it was simply hard to judge him for his need to get back at the people who did this to him.

Yes, the novel could have done with less pages; especially the middle part, in which Monte Cristo prepares his revenge, drags on a bit. However that does not take much away from the enjoyment of the novel (frankly, independently from how much I liked the book, I also really want to give a medal to Dumas simply for not getting lost in all these inter-tangled plotlines...)