The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet

July 6, 2009
The swashbuckling spirit of Rafael Sabatini lives on in Perez-Reverte’s fifth installment to the adventures of the 17th-century Spanish swordsman, Capt. Diego Alariste. The novel finds Diego back in Madrid, where even the slightest personal affront can lead to a clash of blades. Accompanied, as usual, by his loyal young servant, Iñigo Balboa Aguirre, and his friend, the poet and playwright Francisco de Quevedo, Diego learns that both he and King Philip IV are rivals for the attentions of the married actress Maria de Costa, who has many other suitors lined up at her dressing room door. Not even a death threat can scare off the ardent captain, who becomes a pawn in an old enemy’s dastardly plot to assassinate the king. Richly atmospheric and alive with the sights, sounds and smells of old Madrid, this tale of derring-do is old-fashioned fun. It’s elegantly written and filled with thrilling swordplay and hairbreadth escapes—escapist books don’t get much better than this.

August 1, 2009
Prez-Reverte (The King's Gold, 2008, etc.) returns to familiar territory in 17th-century Spain, dispatching Captain Diego Alatriste for a fifth round of swordplay, gamesmanship and swashbuckling romance.

Introduced in Captain Alatriste (2005), our hero is battle-hardened but tender-hearted, skilled with swords both literal and (ahem) metaphorical. In fact, his tenderness for women, in this case for the beautiful actress Mar"a de Castro, tends naturally to lead to complications with their husbands. Alatriste is accompanied by a young servant,›˜igo Balboa Aguirre, whose innocence leads him to folly and to some questionable decisions that endanger his master.›˜igo's narration (though the author also uses an omniscient third-person voice) unfolds from the perspective of an old man who knows how the story is going to end; he gives us occasional flash-forwards to the fate of some of the characters, including the death of Alatriste, as well as to the decline of Spanish culture later in the century. The novel is set during the reign of Philip IV, and political intrigue both foreign and domestic stirs men to occasional acts of violence and attempts at assassination. It's also a golden age of Spanish literature, and writers such as Lope de Vega and Tirso de Molina play roles on the periphery of the action. The lubricious villains try to implicate Alatriste in nefarious plots against the king, but our intrepid gallant of course manages to escape every shackle imposed on him. Although›˜igo's fascination with one of the ladies of the court almost gets both master and servant killed, this is a world in which the good guys ultimately, and predictably, triumph.

Lightweight, pleasant and unobjectionable.

(COPYRIGHT (2009) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

July 1, 2009
Seventeenth-century sword-for-hire Captain Diego Alatriste returns in the fifth and final installment of this internationally acclaimed series. Once again, former soldier and antihero Alatriste wields his sword to dazzling effect in the service of the king or, for that matter, anyone who is willing and able to pay him. Like most successful adventure writers, P'rez-Reverte supplies a dizzying amount of action with a tantalizing dose of passion thrown in for good measure. As Diego and igo, his faithful young sidekick and the narrator of these adventure tales, attempt to navigate the treacherous waters of royal intrigue and political corruption, each is drawn into a romantic entanglement that dramatically complicates their precarious position in King Phillips IVs court. After becoming unwittingly involved in a plot to assassinate the king, Alatriste must muster all of his considerable wits in order to save the king and extricate himself from an untenable position. P'rez-Reverte pays homage to both Alexandre Dumas and Miguel de Cervantes in this rollicking historical escapade. Seventeenth-century Madrid has never been portrayed with such verve and dash.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)