I’ve been a fan of The Count of Monte Cristo for an incredibly long time, so naturally upon seeing that there was a manga version of the story I needed to read it. After having followed this story in a number of its many various forms, I’m pretty well acquainted with the story itself. This manga version follows the tale quite well, hitting all of the important and key points. A man, wrongfully imprisoned for treason at the desires of villains who seek to improve their own ends by removing him from the picture, Edmond Dantes uses the treasure of Sparta to bring about his revenge.

Truly a wonderful story for a variety of reasons, The Count of Monte Cristo is filled with cruel plots and exquisitely planned revenge. I’ve always found this to be a deeply captivating story, though I will admit that I’ve always loved the 2002 film version the best. As a manga, The Count of Monte Cristo is done well, but unfortunately falls into a snag in regards to how lengthy the actual tale is. I don’t think the manga did an exceptional job at piecing the vast array of events together. It is a difficult task to determine which pieces to rush through and which to actually portray within illustrations, and unfortunately the various portions of the tale that were skimmed in favor of having a shorter book were a great loss to the graphic novel as a whole.

All in all, the graphic novel certainly holds true to the general story, but I was less impressed by the quick summarized pieces and felt that they took away a lot of what I would have liked to see in the novel. Perhaps this should have been built into a longer book or perhaps it should have been published in multiple parts, but I simply did not get enough of the story that I loved out of this.

I was provided a free copy of this book via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

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