I suspect this book is hitch hiking a little on the brilliance of the musketeers, while pretending to be (or being perceived as being, which is much the same) more serious by substituting the vengeance theme for the swashbuckling.

That said, and all the melodrama acknowledged as less than ideal, I think simply dismissing it as worthless vengeance pornography is too simple. As is writing it off as melodrama. Especially considering how rich the text is. By that I mean that how you approach it to a great extent determines how you read it: much as it panders to the crowds; it could also be seen as puncturing the melodrama by refusing to provide real closure. It also raises questions of character (what constitutes it, whether it is constant or malleable, gender identity, gender and society... I could go on) and of beginnings and endings and what lies between, not to mention the much more overt discussion of the legitimacy of vengeance.

Fun as iconoclasm is, and easy as this classic is to dismiss, I think this is too easy a target while deserving more respect than some here would give it.