I was pleasantly surprised by this book. Having put it off for years because of it's sheer size, I decided that I needed a meaty classic after reading a bunch of young adult books.

For me, classics usually start incredibly slow but this one had me hooked pretty quickly. The scenes of Dantes in jail were some of the most interesting in the book. The middle of the book is the hardest to get through. It's overly convoluted and I had to look up who the characters were to figure out how they related to each other. Once the revenge starts to play out, the book picks up again and the last third of the book is a page turner.

I felt bad for poor Max at the end and have no clue why the Count treated him the way he did at the end other than prolonging the suspense for the reader.

I could see how a re-read of this could help clarify a bunch of the plot but who has time to re-read a 1100 page book?