The Count of Monte Cristo Introduction by Umberto Eco

When young Edmond Dantes, freshly equipped with a promotion and heading towards marrying his fiancee, is imprisoned for treason, it is not his fault but that of a group of jealous conspirators. Over a long time spent together in prison with an Italian monk, Dantes forms not only a plan for escape, but for revenge. The key to this is an enormous fortune on the island of Monte Cristo, the motor for his ascent into Parisian society from where he plots tragic and convoluted ends for each of his foes. Dumas uses the background of the July monarchy for a novel that contains every trope of adventure novels one could wish for: bandits, affairs, lost sons, impostor nobility, murder in every shape and form, duels of pistol and sword, smugglers, conspiracy, and fake identities. All of this is lavishly told throughout over a thousand pages and Dumas does not want you to miss the exact opera his characters were watching. If you have unreasonable amounts of time on your hands and want to read one and only one adventure nove, this is it.

This book took too long to finish, I was over it at the end tbh. Some characters were simply ICONIC (Luigi Vampa I'm talking about you!), other characters like Monte Christo were unbearable, but the most annoying was the narrator as he constantly referred back to events (which makes sense as it was first published in installments!) and treated the reader as if they were dumb. For such a long and dramatic book I expected the most dramatic ending possible, but I was utterly dissapointed as it felt rushed and forced. The book is also quite slow, as the action only begins around 800 pages in! All in all, I feel very accomplished by having finished this classic, but I would definitely never read it again! I would recommend it for readers that love a large amount of charactres and being left in the dark about a lot of developments, which is then rewarded by big reveals!