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HappyFailure t1_itjrdr8 wrote

It's worth noting that Dumas was paid by the line, giving him a reason to expand his dialogue a bit.

A lovely set of fantasy novels done as a Dumas pastiche are the Khaavren romances by Steven Brust. The Phoenix Guards corresponds to The Three Musketeers, Five Hundred Years After corresponds to Twenty Years After, etc. I haven't found The Baron of Magister Valley yet, but I'm told it corresponds to The Count of Monte Cristo.

One of the interesting things here is that these books are set in the world of the Dragaeran Empire, a setting where Brust has been writing his long-running Vladimir Taltos series for decades and which, um, do *not* share that writing style (these books have been described as being written in "first person smartass"). The Khaavren romances are supposed to be historical novels which exist in the world (and approximate time) of the Taltos books.

Brust *loves* playing around with structure and voice and the like. One book in the Taltos series, which revolves around characters from the two series interacting, is divided into three parts, with the first part written in the Taltos voice and the third part written in the Khaavren voice. It's really odd "hearing" these characters speak in the other style.

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