Captain Alatriste is the story of a fictional 17th-century Spanish soldier who, after being wounded in battle during the Thirty Years' War, is forced to retire from the army. Now he lives the comparatively tame, though hardly quiet, life of a swordsman-for-hire in Madrid. Approached with an offer of work, Alatriste is told to go with another hired blade to an unfamiliar part of the city at midnight and wait. They are received by men who explain that they want Alatriste and his companion to ambush two travelers the following evening, stage a robbery, and give the men a fright. No blood, they are told.
But then a third figure enters the room. He says the job requires some clarification: he increases the pay, and tells them that, instead, they must murder the two travelers. Then he reveals his identity: Emilio Bocanegra. It is a name synonymous with the Spanish Inquisition, the bloodiest name in Europe. This is a man whose requests cannot be denied.
But the following night, with the attack imminent, it becomes clear to Alatriste that these aren't ordinary travelers. And what happens next is only the first in a series of riveting twists and turns, with implications that will reverberate throughout the courts of Europe.
For anyone who loves the work of Arturo Pérez-Reverte, and those who have not yet discovered the delights of this extraordinary writer, Captain Alatriste is one of the most stylish, singular pleasures to come along in years.
Download and start listening now!
"Captain Alatriste is the first of a series of books featuring the eponymous hero, an ex-soldier from the Spanish army of Philip IV. Set in the Madrid of the 1620's it is told through the eyes of Alatriste's page/servant, the orphan of a former comrade-at-arms, aged, in this book, 13. One could quibble about some of the technical issues around the narrator (there are many scenes in which the narrator is not present, for example, and it is a little hard to believe that the taciturn Alatriste would have filled in all the gaps to enable these scenes to be retold with accuracy and the same vividness as those in which he was present). But overall this was a very enjoyable and easy to read historical romp, mixing excitement and humour in the way that I have tried to achieve, probably with less success, in my own book The Waste Land. The real historical and literary characters in Captain Alatriste are amusingly deployed and deftly portrayed, and I enjoyed the 'quotations' from Lope de Vega, Calderon and others, that would have worked even better in the original Spanish."
—
Simon (4 out of 5 stars)