Raising my clasped hands to heaven and casting my eyes upward with an indescribable expression of suffering as the vital force deserts my body causing me to fall senseless to the floor only to rise a moment later filled with a restlessness that cannot be assuaged, pacing endlessly, unconsciously twisting and tearing between my ever moving hands a white cambric cloth soaked with the crystalline tears that drop ceaselessly from my swollen orbs, I cry "Why, why is this book so looong!!"Finished at last. All due respect to those who love this book, and I see why they do love it it is an epic swashbuckling story, I just can't quite get with the extreme mood swings of the characters. I know its high melodrama, I know its a romantic product of a romantic age which elevated and cultivated feeling as a source of right knowledge. I still find all the fainting and gasping and palpitating and weeping and sweating and leaping to be faintly absurd. Also, probably because it was written as a serial, there are some continuity problems. Its a good book, I liked it, if there were three and a half stars I'd probably go with that and I'm glad I read it.
