Twenty Years After

Twenty years after the adventures of The Three Musketeers, d'Artagnan is still only a lieutenant, grinding out a career while France slides toward civil war. Ordered to find his old comrades, he discovers that Athos, Porthos, and Aramis have scattered, and that this time politics may put them on opposite sides. Meanwhile a young man with pale eyes and a burning grievance is following them all: the son of Milady de Winter, sworn to destroy the four men who judged his mother.

Many Dumas readers quietly rate this above its famous predecessor. The heroes are older and wiser and more interesting, the villain is genuinely chilling, and the set pieces rank with anything Dumas wrote, including a desperate mission to save a king from the scaffold. Swashbuckling with gray in its beard.

At roughly 245,800 words, Twenty Years After runs about 27½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

Twenty Years After is in the public domain, so the complete text is free on Project Gutenberg and LoudReader has the entire Project Gutenberg catalog built in. To listen:

1. Download LoudReader for Mac or iPhone (free, no account).
2. Search for “Twenty Years After” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

LoudReader reads with natural offline voices, so the whole book works on a plane or underground. It is fully on-device and private, your library never leaves your device. Listening is unlimited on the free tier.