Customer Reviews

JOSEPH BALSAMO

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

This is a must for Dumas fans. Joseph Balsamo is the first book in a series that capture the history of the French revolution in a novel that is truly of epic proportins.
Love, war, fantasy and politics are delicately woven into the fabric of the story. Highly recommended.

My one-star review here has nothing to do with Dumas' novel, but a very poor publishing job by 'Boomer Books'. It seems to average about a typo or two per page. At times these typos actually confuse the reading, since they are not only misspellings, but also whole words will be replaced with entirely different words. I can take a typo here and there, but in this book it is so common that it begins to affect the enjoyability of reading it.

I will say that the book itself is great and I highly recommend it. I have not seen any other versions of this book, but if you can find one published by other than 'Boomer Books', it would be much better. There is no introduction or translation notes or anything like that. Its very obvious that Boomer put no efforts or care into this.

in fifty years of reading books in several languages, i have never seen a book so poorly prepared. there is not a single page without a typo, misspelling, wrong font, bad punctuation... some pages have as many as ten mistakes. clearly no one at the publisher read the book. apparently no one really cared. it's absolutely awful. don't buy this edition.

This book is so badly proofread and edited that it's a chore to get through it. There are an average of 3 typos per page, not to mention incorrect word substitutions, improper italicization (almost every instance of the words "by" and "my" is italicized), and downright bad translation. The worst crime is that the "editor" chose to peremptorily truncate the novel on the basis that the last chapters aren't good enough to bother to print. Dumas' French Revolution novels are important works of historical fiction and this edition of Joseph Balsamo is an insult to both the author and the reader. I'm disappointed in Amazon for doing business with such a disreputable publisher.

Joseph Balsamo begins with a meeting in the dead of night high in the mountains as a group of robed and hooded freemasons from around the world meet to plot the fall of the French Monarchy (it's actually more complicated than that, but I'm not going to try to put it into words). The leader of this group, Joseph Balsamo, then takes shelter in a storm at the impoverished household of the Baron de Taverney and his daughter Andrée and things then become very mysterious indeed. How is it the younger Balsamo can recall incidents from Taverney's younger days as if he had been there himself? What mysterious hold does Balsamo have over the beauteous Andrée that he can command her actions with a wave of his hand? How is it that when the party of Marie Antoinette stops at Taverney Balsamo provides a sumptuous repast replete with gold plate out of thin air?

After this, the story switches to Paris and Versailles with the intrigues and shenanigans of Louis XV's mistress Madame DuBarry as she connives to have an elderly Baroness agree to present her at court, Balsamo's wife begging sanctuary at a nunnery (very creepy), the wedding procession of Marie Antoinette, Balsamo's mentor's efforts to find the secret to eternal life (the final ingredient needed being the most costly of all) and ending in one heck of a cliff hanger as a fireworks display goes awry and puts Andrée in harm's way with only one person to save her.

Suffice it to say that Dumas' tale of the lives and loves of the Court of Louis XV and the growing tension amongst the lower classes of Paris and beyond was quite entertaining, especially with the mysterious appearances and disappearances of Balsamo in and out of the story. I also very much enjoyed the way Dumas used the character of Gilbert and his rationales about his lack of bread and the methods he would use to obtain the bread an excellent way to support the early beginnings of socialism and resentment against the monarchy. Be advised, you won't find the swashbuckling page turning excitement of the Musketeer series. This is the first of a five volume series and Dumas is setting up much of the background for the later books in this one, so some readers might find this slow paced at times and I only recommend this for Dumas fans (I'm one) or for those looking for well written fictional tales of the times leading up to the French Revolution. Next book in the series, Memoirs of a Physician.

Note, I see some other reviewers complaining about a poorly published edition of this book. I obtained a nice aging copy from the library and was quite satisfied with that, and my review is for that book and not the Boomer Publishing edition.

how come a classic book come with so many horrendous typos? It gets almost impossible to read.if that's tthe quality of books kindle is downloading, I'm sorry, I rather download from other apps and indicate other apps for my friends that are aquiring ipads or iPhones, not to mention other e readers equipments. I'm truly disappointed with Kindle,and Amazon.Amazon alway put observatios on the quality of the books, if they had troubles, like having typos, ripped pages an so on so I knew exactly what I iwas buying and in what conditions and this time I just didn't..

UPDATE: Removed sample and downloaded June 2009 version. Formatting nearly perfect! Yay!

I notice all the complaints about formatting. My sample is not Boomer Books, but Google books downloaded from Amazon Kindle catalog. From page 46:

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A';but I shall Eib aron?"

Jelt hurriedly in" J oun g man > with an expression which

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"W(*ht;'k%>/peearance. h41e won;t 41\\n n Viping the pers..\

You get the idea. I notice that there is now a newer version of Joseph Balsamo available at $2.99. I will remove my sample and download a new sample. Wish me luck.

I'm now addicted to Dumas (pere) stories and was predisposed to liking this book. Thankfully, I'm an editor/proofreader and was able to wade through this poor edition without losing too much of the story, which is very good. I'm a bit confused as to what to read next ... I left poor Gilbert in a terrible predicament at the end of Joseph Balsamo, and yet ... Memoirs starts with no resolution of that predicament. If you can help me figure out which book to read next, I'll be very grateful.