Musketeer Space

Musketeer Space #1-2

by Tansy Rayner Roberts

“I haven’t got a blade. I haven’t got a ship. I washed out of the Musketeers. If this is your idea of honour, put down the swords and I’ll take you on with my bare hands.” When Dana D'Artagnan left home for a life of adventure, she never expected to form a friendship with Paris Satellite’s most infamous sword-fighting the Musketeers known as Athos, Porthos and Aramis. Dana and her friends are swept up in a political conspiracy involving royal scandals disguised spaceships, a handsome tailor who keeps getting himself kidnapped, and a seductive spy with too many secrets. With the Solar System on the brink of war, Dana finally has a chance to prove herself. But is it worth becoming a Musketeer if she has to sacrifice her friends? Swords! Kissing! Friendship! Spies! Spaceships! All for one and one for all. MUSKETEER SPACE is a gender-flipped, space opera retelling of Alexandre Dumas' classic novel The Three Musketeers.

Genres: Science Fiction, Queer, LGBT, Fiction, Retellings, Adult, Space Opera

560 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

Tansy Rayner Roberts is a fantasy and science fiction author who lives in southern Tasmania, somewhere between the tall mountain with snow on it, and the beach that points towards Antarctica.

Tansy has a PhD in Classics (with a special interest in poisonous Roman ladies), and an obsession with Musketeers.

You can hear Tansy talking about Doctor Who on the Verity! podcast. She also reads her own stories on the Sheep Might Fly podcast.

Reviews

[Dev · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was originally going to give this four stars but I bumped it up to five because it's just so much fun! A mostly-queer mostly-genderswapped version of the Musketeers! IN SPACE! I will admit that most of my familiarity with the Musketeers comes from the recent BBC show. I read the first few chapters of the original book a few years ago and was bored out of my mind, but from what I can tell this seems to follow it pretty closely. I actually saw a review that said they thought it followed the original plot TOO closely, but for me it was great because I could get a really good sense of the structure of the original novel without having to actually suffer through it. Anyway this was just really great and I love all the characters so much. It got me in such a Musketeers mood that I am now rewatching the first two seasons of the show so I can catch up lol. Definitely recommend this to people like me who like the general premise of classic novels, but don't just want to read about straight men all the time ;)

[Dave Versace · Rating 5 out of 5]

Oh this book. THIS BOOK!

Tansy Rayner Roberts' genderflipped retelling of The Three Musketeers, as space opera.

This book has flat-out my favourite D'Artagnan of all time (the character who hitherto has made every version of T3M drag for me, including the original book): Dana D'Artagnan is the sexy-smart wannabe Musketeer with high expectations, dubious impulse control issues and a habit of crashing through the plot like a meteor strike. I love her to bits. The actual Musketeers are great as well.

This book is just fucking great, y'all. It's funny, it's smart, the action is fun, the sex is sexy, the characters are one delight after another, and the cake jokes are ridiculous and excessive i.e. perfect. And the plot makes sense all the way through (which I've never quite been sure is true of the source material).

I hope you get to read it some day.

[Robert Batten · Rating 4 out of 5]

Musketeers Space is a far future retelling of the original classic, but don't mistake it for a cheap imitation. Roberts' has successfully repackaged the age old favourite tale of Athos, Porthos, Aramis, and D'Artagnan, delivering it in a well-rounded space opera setting. This is a world you believe you can explore, not populated by cardboard cut-outs. It is a world I would happily dive back into.

Oh, did I mention it's a gender-bender adventure?

Roberts originally released the novel as a serial, funded by her Patreon supporters. She has since repackaged it into an ebook, for which I am grateful. I only mention the development process for this book, as the copy I read did include a number of typos. They were, however, all minor, did not impact my enjoyment of the book. They were also completely understandable when noting the text wouldn't have benefited from the more structured copy-editing it would have received if not starting life as a web serial.

I strongly recommend this to scifi fans, Three Musketeer fans, or weirdos (like me) who love both.

[Llinos · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was smart, funny, fast-paced and absorbing. It sticks pretty closely to the original plot of The Three Musketeers, but even knowing roughly what was going to happen I was gripped and delighted. I really loved the detailed and thoughtful world building that transplanted the story plausibly into a spacefaring setting. I’d happily read a dozen more stories about these characters in this world.

Read the full review at Starship Library.

[Katharine (Ventureadlaxre) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Available currently as a web serial (with an ebook coming at the end), this updates most Wednesdays. See here for more information.

And now I've finished reading! Over a year of awesome-Wednesdays it's all over and I don't know what to do with myself. Other than start proofing!

[Katie · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was so much fun I am amazed it was legal. Queer fabulousness! In Space! With plot and shenanigans!

I have never read Dumas: This book made me want to, and made me suspect that if I do, I will be gleeing because he reminds me of this book.

[Miss Banana · Rating 5 out of 5]

My knowledge of the Musketeers comes mostly through cultural osmosis, 20 pages of the book, and vague, hazy flashes of the 2011 movie, so honestly this book was a delightfully wild ride from start to finish. THE POLITICAL INTRIGUE! THE SPACE! THE *GAYS*!!! Reading this book through 30-minute lunch periods was honestly the hardest thing I've ever done (and I was late clocking back in more than once) because I kept needing to know what was on the next page.

All of the characters were utterly delightful in this new setting, Dana D'Artagnan was the space-faring bisexual icon we all deserve, and there was never a dull moment.

[Dhwani Shah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the coolest book ever, so cool, so cool, so cool.

[Fred Langridge · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lots and lots of fun. I read this mostly-genderswitched-three-musketeers-in-space as a complete novel, and I think there was only one point where I was reminded that it had originally been released as a serial.
It's queer and funny and moving and exciting, and I must add the Dumas original to my reading list: I'd only previously seen one film version and the Dogtanian cartoons.

[Eva Müller]

This isn't a terrible book. It simply is The Three Musketeers IN SPACE. D'Artagnan (who is female in this version and always spelled with a capital D) doesn't ride from Gascony to Paris on his yellow horse and stops in Meung. D'Artagnan starts at Gascony SPACE station with a yellow SPACEship and stops at Meung SPACE station. There a mysterious stranger insults her ship and they duel. Not with swords but with fancy drugs because we are IN SPACE. She loses, continues on to Paris Station and tries to join the Musketeers, a group of elite fliers (of SPACEships) but they don't have an opening. She then sees the mysterious stranger again but when she attempts to follow him she bumps into Athos, almost ruins Porthos' clothes and then accidentally reveals that Aramis is having an affair with a high-ranking lady. They all challenge her to a duel. (All of this is happening IN SPACE).

And so it continues. Just like the original book. Only IN SPACE. And the book does it in the way sff sometimes does: there isn't much coherent worldbuilding, there's just lots of small tidbits that get thrown at the reader: Space stations! Androids! Some people have scales now! Technology that lets your brain connect with your ship! Computer-generated landscapes! Fancy sport games with rules that are never properly explained! But they are awesome! Believe me! Did we mention that we are IN SPACE?

As I said: it's not completely terrible. Sometimes books like that pull themselves together after a while but I just can't bother to read that far because the plot doesn't exactly capture me since I know it already. Having read The Three Musketeers several times. And this book does nothing except add fancy gadgets to the original story. Granted, it also makes it more diverse (Athos is still a guy, all other Musketeers and many of the other important characters are women, many of them not straight) but it doesn't change anything about the basic story (in the 16% I read and glancing over the chapter titles of the rest there also doesn't seem to be much change) and that just doesn't give me much.

If you don't know the book that well or have just seen movie versions you could actually enjoy this.

[Sadie Slater · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tansy Rayner Roberts' Musketeer Space is a genderflipped (well, mostly genderflipped - her Athos is still male), mostly-queer space opera version of The Three Musketeers, in which Dana D'Artagnan leaves her home on Gascon Station to travel to Paris Satellite in pursuit of her lifelong dream of becoming one of the Musketeers (in this version, "Musketeer" refers to the musket-class spaceships they fly), befriends the three inseparables Athos, Porthos and Aramis and has swashbuckling space adventures. The plot follows the original novel very closely, including some of the darker moments which I had been half-expecting Roberts to change or leave out, given that her version generally feels much frothier than Dumas', and the structure is basically a chapter-by-chapter reworking (I gather that it was originally published in instalments on Roberts' Patreon site). The characters are both recognisably versions of their originals and their own engaging selves, and I particularly liked Roberts' development of the characters of the musketeers' engineers, Planchet, Grimaud, Boniface and Bazin, who I don't remember being given anything like as much personality in their original guises of servants. There's lots of clever snarky dialogue and humorous moments, and Roberts' version is (obviously) much more diverse than the original; as well as most of the main characters now being women, many of them are queer and Roberts does the thing of describing white characters' skin colour in a way that makes it clear that the default in this universe is brown skin. The novel's origins as an online serial are sometimes noticeable in a high number of typos and occasional inconsistencies in the spelling of names, but this isn't enough to detract from what is overall a very enjoyable read.

[Heather Jones]

So, I don't DNF (did not finish) books very often. If a book gets my attention enough to move up the list to having me start it, I generally want to give it the chance to show me what it's got. But I read one treadmill-session worth of Musketeer Space and then closed it and chose a new book. And I'd like to explain why, even if just to myself.

This is a good book. A very imaginative, well-crafted, well-written story. It takes The Three Musketeers, gender-flips it, adds some delicious diversity to the cast, then gives it a space opera setting where the Musketeers fly cyber-implant guided ships from their base at Paris Space Station. It's clever and funny and even manages to provide sympathetic and believable underpinnings to D'Artagnan's initial belligerent jackassishness.

But I didn't finish it--indeed, I barely started it. And the reason, as best I can explain, is that it doesn't feel like an interpretation of 3 Musketeers, but rather like a translation. I got a strong impression that I got all the essentials of the creative innovation in the first few chapters, but the story itself was going to run in precise parallel with the original. Which I have read. And don't feel like re-reading at this time.

I may be wrong--I could easily be wrong, given that I only scratched the beginning. And other than the story not being different enough from one I'd already read, there's nothing actually wrong with this book. It's a very well-written book. And if you're the sort of reader for whom the idea of diverse gender-flipped space musketeers is catnip--and especially if you've never actually read the story in the original (or if you think that wouldn't be a problem for you) then by all means let me know how much you enjoyed it!

[Tehani · Rating 5 out of 5]

I feel I'm relatively well versed in Musketeer canon, although admittedly none of this knowledge comes from the original text. That doesn't matter usually, but about two chapters in I realised there was probably a whole bunch of stuff going on in characterisation in Musketeer Space that I had no clue about. About a chapter after that I simply didn't care anymore because it made absolutely no difference to my enjoyment of this book. Roberts breathed new life into the old "all for one" and I was transported - I adored this from beginning to end and whether you're a Musketeer fan, a science fiction fan, or just love a rollicking story peopled by characters who leap off the page at you, I recommend it wholeheartedly!

[Kaia Landelius · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am the worst at writing reviews, especially of books I love because I just want to squee incoherently. With that said, I always enjoy Tansy's books and this is no different! I have a hard time articulating what exactly it is that I love but I mean - women, swords, queer representation, grumpy tortured men (I say this lovingly), a sport I imagine being a bit like if Quidditch, football and hockey had a love child and let it run rampant through the world... what is there not to love?

I especially recommend reading the actual Three Musketeers alongside it, because that made it even more fun.

[Cmoore · Rating 5 out of 5]

I just reread this March 4 2016... and something new happened... I hadn't actually realized how good this book was! So yes I've changed this from a 4 star to a 5 star rating! Now I loved reading it on Tansey's blog but that took most of a year of weekly installments, and I hadn't realized how much book there really was.

If you like a swashbuckler and space opera and don't mind a little gender bending you're going to love this incredible book!!!

[victoria.p · Rating 5 out of 5]

Highly entertaining genderflipped version of The Three Musketeers set in space.

[BrokenMnemonic · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was excellent fun - I haven't enjoyed an adaptation of The Three Musketeers so much since the time Oliver Platt played Porthos.

[Mark Webb · Rating 5 out of 5]

This review forms part of my contribution to the Australian Women Writers 2014 Reading Challenge. All my 2014 AWWC reviews can be found here.

OK, more cheating. I've selected Musketeer Space by Tansy Rayner Roberts for my next review and the book isn't even finished yet. "Why?" I hear you ask. "How? Isn't your cheating just getting super blatant now?"

All valid questions, but stick with me people. Have I ever steered you wrong?

Musketeer Space is the latest endeavour by Tasmanian based speculative fiction author Tansy Rayner Roberts. It is a gender swapped retelling of The Three Musketeers, in a space opera setting. In an interesting twist though, Roberts is writing the book in serialised form. She is releasing a chapter each week on her website, and has invited patronage through the Patreon system, where interested subscribers can pay to support her writing efforts. There are also a variety of perks depending on the level of subscription that you enter into (including an eBook of the whole novel once completed).

So a book you can read for free, but if you want to tip some money in you can also consider (and call) yourself a patron of the arts. What's not to like?

At the time of writing, Musketeer Space is at chapter 33 and a little over half way through the story. One of the reasons I wanted to review it at this point was to signal boost an endeavour which is interesting both creatively and from a business standpoint. I'm fascinated with how people are experimenting with new forms of publishing in the internet age, and this is a great case study to follow.

To the story itself. The prose is characterised by Roberts' sly wit, and filled with feisty, brave and competent characters. It has been very interesting to watch Roberts adapt the original storyline, and the choices she has made to accommodate both the new setting and new genders. The Three Musketeers was originally a serialised novel as well, and the parallels have been interesting to watch there too.

There is a lot of humour in the book, and if you enjoyed any of Roberts' other books (e.g. The Creature Court trilogy) you'll love Musketeer Space.

The pacing is excellent, especially considering the need to stick to the overall structure of the original text. Roberts balances action with emotion in the stories, and has created some very well rounded characters that it is very easy to care about.

As a part of meeting one of the targets of her Patreon campaign, Roberts has recently (as of Christmas 2014) released a novella length Christmas themed prequel to Musketeer Space called  Seven Days of Joyeux . I haven't read it yet, but extra content is just another reason to get on board this Musketeer road train!

In summary, this is a great book that is supported by an innovative funding mechanism. I'd highly recommend that you all go directly to the Patreon page and throw your support behind an Australian author doing interesting things in this brave new age of the internet.

Part 2 - I did actually finish the book!

When last we spoke of this book, I was on chapter 33 (around half way through the book) and going strong. So how about the rest of the book? Well, the wit remained sharp. The characters remained well rounded. The diversity remained broad. The adaptation to a space opera setting remained clever.

I was interested to see how Roberts would keep in line with the original text, when so much of the context was incredibly different. For the most part, the underlying construction and plot lines were remarkably consistent, and the use of a wide array of sexual orientations meant that relationships could be maintained even where some gender swapping from the original characters had taken place. But for all that drive for consistency, the novel remained fresh - a real feat all things considered.

Now, as a warning for the faint hearted, there is so much sauce in this book you could bottle it and hold a sausage sizzle. This very much fits in with the tone of the novel, and due to the afore-mentioned diversity of sexual orientation there is pretty much something for everyone as the plot rolls on.

And speaking of the plot, it is a very satisfying read from that point of view.  I found that part quite remarkable, given that Roberts was writing a few weeks ahead of publication and that introduced some real risk of inconsistency that come from an inability to go back and change an earlier chapter that was already written. The threads of the story came together very well, and I think most readers would be satisfied by the conclusion.

As I said in the previous review, if you're a fan of Roberts' work, you should get yourself a copy of Musketeer Space. Stretching my memory back, I don't recall a lot of science fiction in Roberts' body of work, but hopefully this will be the harbinger of much more to come.

Now, I got the book in eBook form for being a Patreon supporter, but a quick scan of the internet doesn't seem to throw up anywhere where a new reader might source the book in that form. The original blog posts are still available and can be found here.


My original review of the book (when I was half way through) can be found here and the final review can be found here.

[schneefink · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is The Three Musketeers genderswap space AU, and I loved it. It started out a bit slow, but by chapter 14 or so I was already extremely invested in all characters: I loved everyone and shipped everything, and I was happy to discover that the story felt the same. I was trying to remember what happened in the original book I read so many years ago to guess what happened next and hope that certain things might change; I'm kind of glad I didn't remember more because otherwise maybe it might have been too predictable, but like this it worked well for me.

[Angela · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fun light read for most of it. and moreover proves that I like the adaptations of several classics much better than my attempts are reading the originals. I never did get much past the opening chapters of Dumas' book.

And by not having managed to read the that classic I could be very surprised by the plot of this one.

There is apparently a prequel but I am not sure if I am interested enough to look for it.

[Emma · Rating 4 out of 5]

Such a fun retelling of The 3 Musketeers.

I enjoyed a world where fluid sexuality is normal however the only restriction is staying true while in marriage. Great way to make it modern but keep the essential plot points. Plus I love the idea of capsule babies.

The only thing that annoyed me was how the war ended.

[Rhi Marks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am a big fan of the 1970s movies and just (somehow) made it through the original book. There were enough nods to the original book that made it clear Roberts did their homework. The beginning and middle were strong but the ending was a slight disappointment but that may be because some of my favorite original moments didn't translate well into the setting and had to be adjusted.

[Rebecca · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok, so I have a love/hate relationship with The Three Musketeers - love the swashbuckling plot, hate the unbelievably rampant macho sexism. (I read a lot of old fiction. This one is so bad, guys, even for the time.) Gender flipped version with cleverly done SF trappings? Yes, please.

[Pipkia · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book was a wonderful tribute to Dumas, but with a fabulous new edge--sassy, kickass and very queer. Not hard sci-fi but a brilliant story. I simply adored it.

[Kent · Rating 2 out of 5]

too crude for my tastes.

[Eric · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a great time! Some nice calls on making the classic sci-fi!

[LiB · Rating 5 out of 5]

I hate the original novel this is based on. It's a book about a group of extremely unpleasant and violent thugs, and the hero is a serial rapist (although readers of English translations were shielded from that unpleasant fact for a long time) and proud of it. I am firmly on the side of Milady, and wish she'd succeeded in poisoning them all. It's almost certainly supposed to be ironic -Dumas was a revolutionary general after all, and so the portrayal of the heroes of the old regime as thoroughly unpleasant hypocrites is unlikely to be accidental. However, something, his sense of adventure maybe, or just who he was as an adventure novelist, means that he writes the novel on their side, celebrating their exploits, and I find it unpleasant to read.

This novel celebrates the good stuff in the original book, the swashbuckling carelessness and dashing adventurousness that people love about the Musketeers, and know about even if they've never read the novel. It doesn't totally expunge the bad; all of the musketeers and D'artagnan (here Dana D'Artagnan) remain kind-of-bastards, but more in a Han Solo kind of way. Setting it in space and gender-and-sexual-orientation-swapping most (but not all) of the characters also dissolves the engrained misogyny of the musketeers relationships and the gross hypocrisy of their judgements of Milady - it's no longer that they regard half the human race as worthless prey, but they are a little bit selfish and their lovers can take it or leave it.

It's interesting what can't be removed, while making the bones of the original plot still make sense. It might be space, but there is still an aristocracy, and still a church with apparently arbitrary ideas about sexual morality. I'm not sure I could fully suspend my disbelief for a fully gender-equal society that embraces pansexuality but strictly enforces marital fidelity and bans divorce, even if marriage is term-limited. However this book is clearly intended to be a close retelling, and to remove those limits would require moving a lot further from the original plot. Also, swords are still required, of course.

I've made this all sound very worthy, but really, it's a lot of fun. It is after all, Musketeers in space.

[Elizabeth Lovegrove · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gender swap a classic adventure novel, make it queer and set it in space? Yes please!

[Solomon Foster · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lovely space opera retelling of The Three Musketeers. Follows the plot of the original fairly closely, but in addition to the new setting, it's received some modernization as well.

[~Anita~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this. Dana D'Artagnan is believably young and head strong. Athos, Porthos and Aramis all have clear different personalities. D'Artagnan and Athos are bisexual. Hooray for bi representation. The dialogue is clever, the politics realistic, and the intrigues troublesome.