Alexandre Dumas, originally published 1844, e-book version of uncertain origin.

This book was one of the vast canon of “Great Literature Which Everyone is Expected to Have Read And Yet Which I Have Somehow Avoided.” To my joy, it is no longer in that collection, as it is a ripping good yarn, a rollicking adventure, and a laugh out loud funny book to boot! Now I, too, join those who know that it’s really about four Musketeers, more or less, and that they actually do use muskets (and musketoons) on rare occasions, instead of depending entirely upon their swords. It’s no surprise that so many film-makers have used the book as a vehicle for swashbuckling adventure stories (although I can’t claim to have watched all fifteen feature films made of the story, nor the half dozen animations, I have seen enough excerpted to know that their faithfulness to the original is, shall we say, typical Hollywood).
I enjoyed how Dumas not only shows us the King’s Guard as a bunch of rough, overprivileged thugs, but actually makes us like some of them as well. His depictions of political intrigue, court gossip, and the romantic manipulations of the nobility are also particularly entertaining.
It may need to be noted that social norms change, and some ideas that are taken for granted by Dumas may annoy modern readers. Attitudes towards women, servants, Jews, blacks, Muslims, Huguenots, Puritans, or just about any other group of non-Nobility won’t be mistaken for progressive. If you find yourself bothered by this kind of thing, you can take solace in the fact that Dumas attacks with a broad brush, and few escape unscathed.