401 pages
ISBN13 9781927925614
Plot
On the very day of his wedding to the beautiful Mercedes, a young merchant sailor named Edmond Dantas is falsely imprisoned for life, laying to waste his plans of marriage and hard-earned fortune. Following several long years in prison he has managed to escape and reinvent himself as the mysterious Count of Monte Christo. It is the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte and the Count has been plotting his revenge on the three men who had him falsely imprisoned. With a new identity, an incredible education abroad and a vast fortune, has returned completely unrecognizable to those who had committed their crimes against him.
The Positives
I received this manga from Netgalley, and I am so glad that I did. From start to finish I was intrigued. I had never taken the time to read this classic novel, as I am not much for being able to stay interested when it comes to the classics. Having images provided for me helped tremendously in keeping me riveted.
The story itself is a tale of revenge, but it is also more than that. At times it seems like a tale of self-discovery and heartache. As I have never read the original novel I can’t make any comparisons on how well it stays true to the original. What I can say is that if the classic novel is anywhere near as good as this manga was then I may give that a shot.
Since this was an early review title the images weren’t high quality as they are in the printed format, but even still they were beautiful. The characters were easy to look at, and the art kept to the emotional feel of the book.
One of my favorite parts of this manga was at the end of the book. It includes notes from Crstal S. Chan on what was condensed, what was removed, and what was clarified to make the manga easier to read, but still keep it true to the original story. They also include a chart that shows how the characters relationships with each other. This would have been very helpful during the time I spent reading this manga.
Overall this manga took me a day to read, and that was with quite a few breaks as real life took over for hours at a time.
The Negatives
Many of the issues that I had when reading this manga were simple and didn’t deal as much with the content itself. The first issue was getting used to scrolling to the end of the eBook and moving backwards. I have been an avid reader of traditional manga, so it wasn’t weird for me to read backwards, but it was the first time reading a manga on an eReader.
The next issue was pacing of the manga. I understand the need to condense a novel into a format that is much shorter, and again I have not read the original novel for comparison at this time. The pacing however seemed to struggle at times, abruptly changing between sub-plots and skipping time. This made it difficult to keep track of who was who, even with an image to help keep them in my mind.
Overall
Overall, I would highly recommend this manga to anyone who was interested in the insanely revenge driven character of the Count of Monte Cristo but never thought they would pick up the classic novel version. It was a fun way to delve into a classic story without spending a copious amount of time reading a novel. You gather majority of the original story from reading, and you are able to do it within a few hours.
One recommendation I have is to buy this book not as an eBook but as a physical copy. It would be much easier to read the manga and flip back and forth to the character relationship guide in a physical copy.
Rating: 4.5/5
Reasons for not getting a perfect score: Reading it as an eBook caused me to not be able to know about the wonderful character relationship guide at the end of the manga.
Happy reading!
