Even though I read Balsamo the Magician and the Mesmerist's Victim as separate volumes, they really are one story and so I’ll put the reviews together. If you don’t read these back-to-back, don’t worry too much since there’s some recapping in the second that will help. I think they should be read quickly though since there’s a lot to remember and keep straight.

The man of the titles - Joseph Balsamo, also known as Count Felix isn’t as charming or as appealing as the leading men in other Dumas novels. He’s more of a villain than a hero and he’s as slippery and selfish as they come. He uses hypnotism to enthrall, trap and eslave two women - Lorenza Feliciani and Andrea Taverney - both because they have psychic powers that he uses to “see” secrets, plots and relationships of the aristocracy. He uses these bits of information for his own ends, but swears it’s really part of a larger plot to bring down the reigning French family, the Bourbons.

Balsamo is a creepy man, but he has a creepier mentor who travels and lives with him and claims to be even older than Balsamo claims to be and that’s 3700 years! This supernatural element is also new - Dumas’s novels are always pretty down to earth. This adds a frisson of dread and unease that mere politics and plotting can’t bring. It also brings about the tragic and foreseeable end to one unfortunate character.

I won’t go into more of the plot since it is intricate and convoluted and there are a lot of players. In this way it’s just like any other Dumas novel. Unlike some of those, however, it doesn’t have a strong female lead. All the women in this novel are either schemers or victims, but it’s the oppressed state of women in general that forces them to these two extremes. The nunnery plays a big part - women retreating to it or being forced to it because they have no other recourse. They can’t work and support themselves, they can’t live alone or direct the course of their own lives. Property and baby-machines, although one of them seems to stick up for herself in the end. I only wish the other could have. The way the women are treated is a sad testament to the “inconvenient woman”. She has to be shut up or shut away and it doesn’t really matter which or how.

Women aren’t the only ones who get the short end of the stick - there’s a black servant who is made the butt of a royal joke when he’s made “Governor” of Luciennes, one of the royal estates where Louis XV houses his mistress Countess Dubarry. It’s all hilarious to the courtiers and poor Zamore just rolls his eyes and shovels candy into his mouth. Even the poorest, most debased of the old guard think they’re so much better than him. I wonder how much of Dumas’s own experience went into these vignettes.

Many of the prominent characters are taken from real life and when Dumas wrote the book it was a true historical fiction novel; the events he uses took place decades before he was born. King Louis XV is on his way out and Louis XVI has just married Marie Antoinette of Austria. We all know how that ends, but it is interesting to see how the court shifts and maneuvers and manipulates to its advantage; which will continue in The Queen’s Necklace. ( )