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THE SUN OVER BREDA
From Publishers Weekly
A former war correspondent, Spanish novelist Pérez-Reverte continues his internationally acclaimed Captain Alatriste series with a third translated volume (following Purity of Blood), every bit as terse and engaging as previous books. Diego Alatriste, a 17th-century mercenary and wily veteran of campaigns from Italy to Flanders, is part of the army of Spanish King Philip IV—a defender of the Catholic faith—that's trying to suppress the Calvinist heretics of the Low Countries. Narrated is retrospect by Íñigo Balboa, who at the time of the action was Alatriste's 14-year-old page, this installment focuses on the Spaniards' siege of the fortified rebel city of Breda. As the stalemate drags on, the battle becomes less "a matter of military interest to Spain but, rather, one of reputation." Its power and influence in decline, Spain's lingering hopes to avoid another embarrassing setback in Flanders rest with stoic warriors like Alatriste. The action is fast, furious, and sanguinary, and Pérez-Reverte grimly recreates the universal madness and desperation of combat. He also captures the tedium and misery that is the common soldier's everyday fate and the zealotry with which Christians—Catholic and Protestant alike—once massacred each other. Factually sound and vividly imagined, this latest incarnation of Captain Alatriste will cheer old fans and win new ones.
Kirkus Reviews
The siege of the Dutch city of Breda in the late-16th century near the end of the Hundred Years' War is the subject of this third installment in Perez-Reverte's five-volume saga. As in its predecessors (Captain Alatriste, 2005, etc.), I-igo Balboa, teenaged servant and battlefield companion to the eponymous Captain, narrates a tale of violent action and courage under fire engaging enough to have flowed from the pen of another Dumas. At its outset, the adventurous pair have joined Spanish infantry troops fighting in Flanders to wrest possession of a thriving (and strategically located metropolis) from the "heretic" (i.e., Calvinist) Dutch and their allies, and bring it under the control of Spain's Catholic King Philip II. After a lively beginning, the narrative sputters, as the weight of its author's obviously considerable research permits I-igo to overindulge in expository detailing of military, political and religious particulars. Fortunately, his is an energetic intellect, and-like Thomas Berger's "Little Big Man" Jack Crabb-I-igo eavesdrops on great men's doings, and makes his own modest marks on history, first by helping future playwright Calder-n de la Barca rescue endangered books from a burning library, later by providing painter Diego Velazquez with information crucial to the creation of the latter's masterpiece The Surrender of Breda. The author neatly sidesteps redundancies implicit in successive descriptions of not dissimilar battles by focusing on such unconventional matters as burgeoning discontent (and near "mutiny") among exhausted and unpaid soldiers, a Dutch "challenge" which leads to an episode of "five against five" combat and, through I-igo's adoring yet sharp eyes, apowerful indirect characterization of his cynical, war-weary Captain ("sickened with pain and blood"). And there's some delightful metafictional misdirection in a pair of sly appendices. Don't miss the exciting conclusions.
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