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.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

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