Captain Alatriste
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A Spanish hero for the ages
REVIEW BY JORGE ANTONIO RENAUD If any country continues to clothe itself in the cloak of its history, it is Spain. Gloriously proud of their short-lived arc as a world power following Spain's conquest of the New World, Spaniards are at the same time defensive of the aristocratic excesses of their blue-blooded imperials. Out of this dichotomy, Arturo Pérez-Reverte has fashioned a hero as fine and tempered as the blade of Toledo steel he has mastered—Captain Diego Alatriste, swordsman for hire. Pérez-Reverte's reputation as a writer who seamlessly blends intellectual stimulation with breathless action was richly burnished with his last novel, The Queen of the South (reviewed at right in the Book Clubs column). In Captain Alatriste, which is the first of a series written years ago and now being released in English, the author visits an era when the glitter of New World gold masks a terrible truth—Imperial Spain is corrupt and dying. Dukes and counts jockey for a playboy king's favor, common Spaniards live on centavos and the Grand Inquisition still casts its fanatic shadow over them all. Woven through the book is a sense of desperation, of time slipping away as Spain squanders her fortune and her soldiers. Amid the intrigue and betrayal, Diego Alatriste clings to the triple truths that govern a Spanish caballero's life: honor, courage and friendship. Wounded during the Thirty Years' War, Alatriste hires out his blade and raises the son of a dead comrade. Accepting a contract to waylay two English travelers, Alatriste's refusal to butcher a courageous man sends ripples through the Spanish court, the Inquisition and the English monarchy. Suspenseful and literate, Captain Alatriste is a novel to be savored, and Alatriste himself is a man to be admired, but from a distance, lest the steel in his blade and his soul prove too high a standard. He is not just a hero—he is all that Spain aspired to be, and, for too brief a time, might have been. Jorge Antonio Renaud writes from Texas.
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