The Musketeer's Apprentice [Kindle Edition]

Sarah D'Almeida (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Next in the swashbuckling series featuring mystery-solving Musketeers.

In a search for his apprentice's killer, Musketeer Porthos rallies his friends to discover who was responsible, pursuing the truth even as he puts his own life in danger.

Product Details

• Format: Kindle Edition
• File Size: 499 KB
• Publisher: Berkley (September 4, 2007)
• Sold by: Penguin Publishing
• Language: English
• ASIN: B001CPY1GG
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #491,656 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

More About the Author

I was born in Portugal far more years ago than I like to admit to, in a -- then very small -- place called Granja (lugar da Granja -- lugar possibly transtating roughly as hamlet -- but literally translating as "place") in the freguesia (allegiance/fiefdom) of Aguas-Santas (Holy Waters) in the Conselho (council) of Maia in the district of Porto.

All those designations are changed now, but as I like to tell people I grew up somewhere between Elizabethan England and Victorian England with just a little of the twentieth century thrown in.

This might be exaggerating -- not much -- but the truth is that I did go to a village school and learn to write with a quill pen. Though I used ballpoint pens at home. I penned my first "novel" with ballpoint at around the age of six. And since it was pretty easy -- all twenty pages of Enid Blyton rip-off -- I abandoned what I (by then) suspected was an unattainable aspiration of becoming an angel when I grew up. I decided instead to be a novelist.

Once this was decided, of course, it didn't take all that long at all. Only some... cough... twenty years, during which I acquired a degree from the University of Porto (where we didn't use quill pens), found that employment for English majors was at best scant, moved to the US, changed my name, got married, worked at a variety of jobs from multilingual translator to retail clerk, had two kids and a varying and scary number of cats and read far more than is good for any human being.

So, now I live in Colorado with my husband, two teen sons who are both taller and stronger -- and far more handsome -- than I and four indoor cats, plus a variety of Not-Our-Cats(tm) who beg food at the kitchen door and for whom we provide facilities summer and winter. But who are not... cough... our cats. Ever.

I've been telling lies for fun and profit since 1994 (I did it for free long before that.)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Charles Buckingham? Agggggg!, March 27, 2009

By 

Alex Service - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Musketeer's Apprentice (A Musketeers Mystery) (Paperback)

I'm steadily making my way through this series, and am now on book four. These books are a frustrating mixture of interesting character development and some fun ideas, with just a ridiculous level of sloppiness -- sloppy editing, an apparent complete lack of proof-reading, and most frustrating of all for me, an almost total lack of historical research. I get the feeling that if Ms. D'Almeida had simply bothered to read a few Wikipedia articles while writing these books, she could have saved herself from myriad errors! She also seems to have a bizarre lack of knowledge of French names (some of the minor characters have truly weird names that seem to be out of some middle school kid's fan fiction), and of how the names and titles of nobility actually work. In the previous book, one of the things that made me say "argh" was that Cardinal Richelieu's name is given as Armand de Richelieu, rather than Armand Jean du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu. Ok, so it seems like a small error, but it's one of the many points where I was taken out of the narrative by saying to myself "the character who says that would never make that mistake!" And now here in "The Musketeer's Apprentice," a crucial plot element hinges on the point that the Duke of Buckingham and Constance Bonacieux allegedly have the same initials, CB, so his handkerchief could be mistaken for hers. Only, they don't at all! Supposedly the CB stands for "Charles Buckingham," but a) Buckingham wasn't his last name, it was his title, and b) his name wasn't Charles! The guy's name was George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham! It's this kind of seemingly minor thing that adds up to be really infuriating. A little research, or the services of a decent proof-reader/editor, would have gone a long, long way toward making these books be what they should have been.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars For me, inexpensive and quite sufficiently entertaining..., October 9, 2010

By 

William E. Adams (Midland, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Musketeer's Apprentice (A Musketeers Mystery) (Paperback)

Some other reviewers were bothered by historical inaccuracies and sloppy proofreading in this paperback novel. Well, I don't like either of those flaws, but I know so little about the world of the Musketeers that I wouldn't recognize an historical inaccuracy anyway. (Try me on books about Jesse James, Billy the Kid, the American Revolution, or Abe Lincoln and I'll get quite nit-picky myself.) However, I am almost 66 years old, and my knowledge of the Musketeers comes from the old comic-book "Classics Illustrated" version of Dumas' novel, and several movie treatments. On that level, this story was just fine. I found my copy in a "dollar store" for just over a buck, and while I agree it was a slow start, the last two-thirds got better and better. This is not enduring literature, but rather a good way to be lost in another world for several hours. I used the book for "emergency reading" because my job entails sometimes getting to people's homes for paperwork appointments too early, or having them ask me to delay at the last minute, or finishing too quickly to drive straight to my next appointment. So I took about three months to get to page 100, then one month to do the next 100, and finally, I got really hooked on the tale and did the last one-third in a week. Thanks, Sarah. Your novel had humor, action, sex, intrigue, and a surprisingly large amount of family conflict and sad emotion. It was obvious that by my not being familiar with the other series entries, I was missing a lot, so I will look for this book's mates and grab another volume if I get the opportunity.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wonderful take on Dumas, September 27, 2007

By 

Katherine A. Paulk "Kate" (PA, USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: The Musketeer's Apprentice (A Musketeers Mystery) (Paperback)

I've now read all three of the Musketeers mysteries, and Musketeer's Apprentice is another piece that's great fun. Ms D'Almeida does an excellent job of recreating the style of Dumas' originals without becoming too modern. An excellent and intriguing mystery is combined with adventure, high politics, and family tensions.

I personally didn't have any issues with the copyediting glitches - while "peaked" instead of "piqued" is a glaring error, I have seen much, much worse and in any book it's almost guaranteed that something will slip through. It didn't spoil my enjoyment of the book in any way.

I hope there'll be more of these, and I'm eagerly looking forward to the next Musketeers mystery.