Rating: 
Summary: Seduction And Love..
Review: This novel was one of the most witty and cynical that I have ever read. De Laclos has a gift for capturing the voices of his depraved characters. His voice was especially strong with the Marquise De Merteuil.
The basic story-line was a pair of depraved aristocrats plot against a young innocent convent girl and a righteous woman and find that their plot has deadly consequences. It is like nothing I had never read before, since it was completely in letter format. I must admit that I normally use to the typical prose format that most novels are in. But reading the letters was wonderful and it made it feel intimate; as if you were really getting into the minds of the characters. Valmont and Merteil were both so vicious but strangely charming and your heart does go out to Tourvel and Danceny; the only figures in the book that truly do believe in love.
Overall, this book was such a pleasure to read and I highly recommend reading it with dark chocolates around.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Book; Good Translation; Decent notes
Review: This stunning novel about the Vicmonte de Valmont and theMarquise de Merteuil's adventure in attempting to lure a pure heartedgirl into bed; is incredibly well written and exhillirating to read.In a story of lies, deceit, and sex; it is impossible to be boredreading this epistocple work of literature. The plot twists and theending may seem unbelieveable, but still has you convinced. I howeverwould probably recommend a different version than the Oxford one.
Rating: 
Summary: Dangerous Liaisons!
Review: Those who have not see the movie "Cruel Intentions", it is worth also reading the book, before you run to the video store. It was the 1782 bestseller novel "Les Liaisons Dangeruses" which started it all. Two of most scandalous and controversial people, make a 'bet' on one innocent girls life. The cruel passion, the constant betrayl of these two gifted, wealthy and bored, lead to what could shock your mind. They 'play' with power and only to succseed, even if the innocent must die.Vicomte de Valmont and Marquise de Merteuil (Sebastian And Kathryn, Cruel Intentions) will take you through their letters of pure evil. Will they sucseed, who will win the bet? Read it and find out your self. Deffinately 4 stars
Rating:
Summary: This book is spellbinding.
Review: When I first started to read this book i did'nt really know what to expect. Then i started to read it and it pulled me into to it's multi plot and clever characters. I must say it has a perfect end. (Very Shocking!) I won't give the end away and it was a little difficult for me to understand but over all it was a great book.
Rating:
Summary: A masterpiece of manipulation (and an excellent translation)
Review: When I read Choderlos de Laclos' 1782 novel, "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" (which retains its French title in the 1961 English translation by P W K Stone), I found myself amazed and thrilled by its absolute excellence of execution. Its energy and spirit, and the seductive and machiavellian - perhaps even diabolical - undertones which whisper throughout the work, urge the reader ever onwards in the best page-turning tradition. It is possibly not for nothing that the book itself was eventually decreed 'dangerous' by French officials a full 42 years after it first appeared, long after it might have been expected to have lost its ability to shock. Even if you have seen the films "Dangerous Liaisons" (dir. Steven Frears) or "Valmont" (dir. Milos Forman) based on the book - and whether or not you liked them - this is an outstandingly good novel which is beautifully served by the precise and graceful prose of its translator, whose subtle range of diction manages to convey the tones and tempers of the characters most convincingly. The written story's chief virtues - a compelling narrative drive, and a skill in characterisation which permit some superbly-observed insights - easily withstand comparison with the screen versions; even today, when we are so fully exposed to the diverse secrets of the psychiatrist's confessional and the details of all the world's vicissitudes and miseries, it would be hard to improve on their portrayal here in print. The book succeeds so well for many reasons. Some of its appeal to a sophisticated (or at least blasé) modern audience is, I believe, the multi-layered cynicism of its vainglorious but not unattractive main characters and rivals, the Marquise de Merteuil and the Vicomte (viscount) de Valmont, a reminder that profound deceit is not the sole prerogative of the post-industrial era. Part of the reader's amusement is to observe how their egotism - by far the most easily-wounded of their sensibilities - is also an exercise in the deception of themselves as well as of all those with whom they have dealings. Equally, their wily scheming and duplicity simultaneously appal the reader while also appealing to any secret desire he might himself harbour to exercise his or her own will with equal freedom and with equal heedlessness of conscience or consequences, thus planting a distinct ambivalence in his breast. This effect is augmented by the shifting first-person narrative, a device which gives the voices of its protagonists an intimate (and often touching) immediacy and multiplies the scope for irony by giving the reader a consistently better view than the characters, to which the skilful interweaving of the sub-plots also contributes. I should mention that the novel is written entirely as a sequence of letters. This format was common in the 18th century when the book was written, but its relative rarity in modern fiction makes its appearance today refreshing. That it is overtly concerned with the sexual seduction of the weak by the strong partially disguises the fact that it is also a philosophical novel whose themes would easily form the subject of more general discussion. As a depiction of the relations between individual human beings, it is, to be sure, a study of calculating spiritual emptiness, but one which does not shy from laying bare the catastrophic consequences of the conspirators on their victims, just as the report of a war correspondent might describe in detail the horror of a bomb explosion in a hospital. "Les Liaisons Dangereuses" not only contains plenty of anguish on the part of its characters and an affecting deathbed scene, but the reader's own emotions are made to oscillate intensely throughout from amusement to arousal, from curiosity to incredulity, from admiration to dismay... all thanks to the superb manipulation of Laclos, whose mastery of both narrative and reader is absolute and, perhaps, somewhat unsettling. (But how I wish he had written more!)
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