Wow. Finishing this book is going to leave a huge chasm in my heart where Edmond Dantès filled it before.

The Count of Monte Cristo is an incredibly exciting yet destroying book. From the beginning, Dumas’s prose creates a setting and worldview from the eyes of Edmond Dantès that attach you to this character so profoundly that you wonder if he’s not based on a real person in history. What Dantès is subjected to and the transformation of who he was into who he becomes isn’t written about for chapters on end, but the empathy and desire for his success that I felt for him was that of a character whose introduction is multiple books long—I mean, I was rooting for Dantès to win even when his actions were becoming morally gray, and the humility and self awareness of his character furthered these feelings. The satisfaction of Dantès’s victories were as affecting as his internal despair and misfortunes, which just bring you to tears and crush your soul in the turmoil you understand he’s going through.

Aside from Dantès as well, every character is heavily nuanced and you can understand just how much they’re battling within themselves; I started pitying characters that are more villainous because I understand so much about their motivations and histories. There are clear antagonists in this book, some of whom you hate from cover to cover, but notwithstanding the effects of their actions, I can perceive the cracks in my bias against them.

The Count of Monte Cristo will forever leave a mark on who I am going forward. Dumas writes beautifully and often wittily, and although I many times got lost in the flowery language that is so present, not a single word of the poetic emotions conveyed in this book, now my favorite one, escaped my heart.