The Count of Monte Cristo - The awesome power of a serialized novel

By DesertDog95

So a little while back I asked on a book rec thread which super long novels (like 1000+ pages) were actually worth it. Monte Cristo ended up getting way more votes than anything else—like double the next most popular one, Shogun. I still had a couple things I meant to read first, but I figured that post basically gave me permission to start with Monte Cristo. Finished it today and… yeah, it totally blew past what I thought it would be like. It might be the best-put-together story I’ve read so far, and I’m saying that with real excitement for whatever comes next for me. I’m not claiming it’s the single best-written thing ever made, but the way Dumas built this whole thing felt like it gave me basically everything I was hoping for and then some. I was definitely warned there’s a stretch in the middle where things move slow for a few hundred pages. And to be fair, there’s a big part that needs a ton of setup—like carefully setting each “domino” in place before everything finally kicks into gear and you get that emotional rush when the first one goes. Still though, even during the slower section, it wasn’t just dragging. I actually like delayed payoff, and those pages still felt like they mattered instead of just stalling. Thinking about that middle part made me wonder if it being originally serialized had something to do with it holding my attention the whole way. If each installment was basically only a chapter or two, I can see how that would force you to make sure there was always something engaging coming up right away. Like, “okay, what can I leave off on that makes people want the next bit?” I don’t mean to say a long novel has to be serialized to work, because obviously plenty of huge books do fine without that. But still—I can’t help wondering how it changes the way an author writes if they’re putting the story out in pieces instead of dropping it all at once. Overall it was basically perfect for me. Sure, there are some nitpicky 21st-century things I could complain about, but it’s over 150 years old, so I get it. 9.5/10, and I’m seriously looking forward to rereading it again and again later.