Customer Reviews

Purity of Blood

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(17)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

4 and 1/2 stars.

"Purity of Blood" is Arturo Pérez-Reverte's exciting sequel to "Captain Alatriste". Written in the swashbuckling style of Dumas and set in early 17th-century Madrid, "Captain Alatriste" introduced us to the hero of Captain Diego Alatriste. Diego is newly returned from Spain's war in Flanders and ready to hire himself out as a bodyguard and general sword-for-hire.

"Purity of Blood" finds Diego on a new adventure. His friend, Don Francisco de Quevado, introduces Diego to an aging father who seeks to rescue his daughter from a convent. The convent is not a place of worship but, rather a place of obscene debauchery overseen by an aristocratic priest with connections at the court of King Phillip IV. The father's attempt to seek the release of his daughter is met with a threat to reveal the family as `conversos' (Catholics who have Jewish blood). Exposure as a converse is a powerful threat in a country in which the forces of the inquisition can imprison torture and burn conversos at the stake.

The story is narrated by Inigo Balboa, Alatriste's young page, in the manner of Dr. Watson's memoirs of Sherlock Holmes. As with any Holmes story, the game is quickly afoot and Alatriste launches a rescue attempt. Alatriste quickly discovers that the best laid plans of mice and swordsmen-for-hire can be beset with complications. Antagonists from his first adventure, particularly the Italian assassin Gualterio Malatesta, return to seek revenge both on Alatriste and Balboa for their actions in "Captain Alatriste".

Pérez-Reverte does an excellent job moving the story along. As one might expect in a series, the character of Alatriste and the other recurring players introduced in Captain Alatriste are fleshed out. Although there is plenty of action in Purity of Blood Pérez-Reverte provides a great deal of period detail about Spain, the inquisition, and daily life in the sometimes sordid and dangerous streets of 17th-century Madrid. Balboa's reflections on Spain's social structure, the vagaries of the reign of Phillip IV, and his discourse on the beginning of Spain's fall from an imperial world power of the first rank to that of a nation marked by dissolution and decay are both entertaining and informative.

Purity of Blood is an excellent story and well worth reading. However, because this is a sequel, and because many of the characters and the relationship among those characters is formed in "Captain Alatriste" I think it advisable for the reader to start with the first book, which has recently been issued in paperback. Both books are well worth reading and Purity of Blood has recently been released in paperback.

Purity of Blood is well worth reading.
L. Fleisig

Arturo Perez-Reverte's "Purity of Blood" is second in the Captain Alatriste series of historical adventure novels, currently a 5-volume series of books which began publication in Spain in the mid 1990s. The books follow the adventures of Captain Alatriste and his adolescent protege Inigo Balboa as they swashbuckler their way through 17th-century Spain. The Alatriste books are obviously aimed closer to the commercial market than much of Perez-Reverte's other work, evoking associations as they do with "The Three Musketeers" or Johnston McCulley's Zorro stories. "Purity of Blood" is set against the backdrop of the Spanish Inquisition. During one of Alatriste's adventures, he and his companions fall into a trap and young Inigo--framed as a "Judaizer"--falls afoul of the Inquisition.

The book does have its good moments, such as the scene in which Alatriste, trying to find some way to rescue Inigo, confronts a most powerful politician, a bureaucrat at first disinclined to give them any aid. Pushed to desperation, Alatriste, usually a quiet, stoic man, delivers a monologue in which we see the undeniable potency of melodrama:

"'Excellency. I have nothing but the sword I live by and my record of service, which means nothing to anyone.' The captain spoke very slowly, as if thinking aloud more than addressing the first minister of two worlds. 'Neither am I a man of many words or resources. But they are going to burn an innocent lad whose father, my comrade, died fighting in those wars that are as much the king's as they are yours. Perhaps I, and Lope Balboa, and Balboa's son, do not tip the scale that Your Excellency so rightly mentioned. Yet one never knows what twists and turns life will take, nor whether one day the full reach of a good blade will not be more beneficial than all the papers and all the notaries and all the royal seals in the world. If you help the orphan of one of your soldiers, I give you my word that on such a day you can count on me.'"

Unfortunately, the elements of plot and character in "Purity of Blood" take a seat at the far back of this bus, a bus clearly driven by the story's mise-en-scene. Essentially, the novel is all about its historical milieu--an excuse for the author to recreate the Spanish Inquisition and emphasize the gross anti-Semitism of the era. Thus, the novel comes off sounding more like an anthropology experiment, a modernist morality tale. And the story's meager adventuring suffers for this. The trouble here is very well demonstrated in a line of narrative late in the novel, a line that illuminates Perez-Reverte's racial guilt and his gaudy, off-putting, public self-flagellation: "It seemed that to be lucid and Spanish would forever be coupled with great bitterness and little hope."

This second, after "Captain Alatriste," in a projected series of seven by the Spanish best-selling author features Diego Alatriste, a taciturn, brooding 17th century soldier, mercenary and man of honor, and his 13-year-old ward Inigo Balboa in a story as filled with atmosphere as it is action.

The atmosphere is pretty gritty, having mostly to do with the Inquisition and the Madrid underworld of cutthroats, criminals and fugitives of all kinds. Narrated by Balboa some years after the events, the story takes place in 1623. Alatriste accepts a job from a converso family - Jews who converted to Christianity - to rescue their daughter from a convent that is run more like a brothel than a house of God.

But the rescue goes awry and in the ensuing mayhem Balboa is captured by the Inquisition, though not without putting up quite a fight. Thereafter the narrative alternates between Balboa's interrogations and experiences in prison and Alatriste's efforts to find and rescue him while eluding capture himself.

The characters are well fleshed out and Balboa's voice is particularly wry and appealing. Alatriste paints a vivid picture of 17th century Spain and its politics, daily life and dangers. There's plenty of action, though it's more thoughtful than swashbuckling. Not quite at the level of Patrick O'Brian's seafaring adventures, this should appeal to readers who enjoy that level of historical detail and literate writing with their derring-do.

-- Portsmouth Herald

This is the sequel to Captain Alatriste and continues with the Three Musketeers-like adventures of the eponymous captain in seventeenth century Madrid. It is essential to read the previous book to appreciate the story. Old conflicts and grudges are carried forward into this new story. A plan to rescue a nun from an abusive convent goes awry and Inigo Balboa finds himself in the Toledo dungeons of the Inquisition. I did like Captain Alatriste more than this second book. Now that we have been introduced to the characters, the novelty has worn off and there seems to be a lot of talk, but too little action to fill a whole book. On the other hand, the descriptions of the life of the period are fascinating as always. I think the most notable and interesting aspect of the book is its account of the working of the Spanish Inquisition.

The War in the Flanders are about to resume and the old soldiers are returning to their Tercios. Sword for hire, Diego Alatriste is persuaded by a friend to do one last job, help a family rescue a daughter being held against her will in a convent. Thus begins the second installment in Arturo Perez Reverte's Captain Alatriste series.

There must be some deep set human need for tales of sword play and adventure. This genre of story has produced some great authors including my favorites the immotral Alexandre Dumas, Emilio Salgari and Rafael Sabatini. In the last few decades this classic genre has been subsumed by the Fantasy genre with its love of sword and sorcery tales. So it is a pleasure to see a major contemporary writer mine the past to create a new series of swashbuckling novels.

Perez Reverte is a talented writer and his inclusion of details from Spain's Golden Age give this novel an historical richness absent from most swashbuckling tales. My only complaint with the series is that each of the books is short and more properly should be called a novela. Perez Reverte's focus is on action and not on the development of character.

This is a wonderful genre of fiction and people new to it should start with the classics like the "Three Musketeers", "Scaramouche" and the "The Scarlet Pimpernel". Perez Reverte's Alatriste novels are good and the reader will not be disapointed but honestly his novels fair less well when compared to Alexandre Dumas' "Three Musketeers", "Twenty Years After" or "Man in the Iron Mask". Dumas wrote novels and Perez Reverte writes stories.

Arturo Perez-Reverte keeps his swashbuckling Captain Diego Alatriste going in this one, the second in the Alatriste series, as the indomitable soldier of fortune and his boy apprentice, Inigo de Balboa, son of one of the Captain's former comrades in arms, stumble into still another adventure.

This time they run up against the Inquisition and the Spanish obsession with the pure blood of "Old Christians", a euphemism for Catholic Spaniards who have no Jewish blood in their ancestry (since the Jews of the land were either driven out or forced to convert a century or so before this story takes place). Alatriste finds himself enlisted by a poet friend into a Quixotic scheme to rescue the daughter of a Spanish caballero of, it turns out, suspect blood. The young girl has been inducted, apparently against her will, into a convent that is said to serve as a front for a rogue priest's private seraglio and Alatriste is prevailed upon to lead a rescue attempt. Things take a sharp turn southward as Alatriste leads his small force of conspirators in the dark of night onto the convent's grounds and poor Inigo, the Captain's ward and page, ends up in the hands of the Inquisition.

Alatriste must figure out who is behind the machinations that have ensnared them and find a way to cut the knot that binds. The dauntless Captain remains the strong silent type as he scuttles about in the shadows, dodging the Inquisition's agents and seeking out those who have conspired against him. At the very heart of the plot lurks an old and deadly enemy and Alatriste will get his chance to at last engage this man before the story runs its course.

There are weaknesses here, unfortunately, including a slow and almost ponderous beginning and a heavy emphasis on poetic stanzas which don't play as well in English as they may, perhaps, in Spanish. All are recorded in a somewhat tiresome fashion by our narrator, none other than the young Inigo, ensnared, in this book, at the very center of the web that has been spun for Alatriste. Fortunately, the Captain, honorable and deadly as he is, still has a few friends in high places and a few chits he can call in.

One particular problem with the book, is its narration. Told in first person throughout, Inigo spends much of this adventure in an Inquisition prison cell in Toledo, so it seems rather odd when he recounts the Captain's actions in detail, as they are occurring far away from him in Madrid. The idea, one supposes, is that Inigo learned everything that happened afterwards from the other participants and put it all together many years later. Still, it rings odd to switch from Inigo's firsthand account of his own captivity in the hands of the Inquisitors to an equally detailed telling of the Captain's nighttime escapades. Either Inigo had very good sources, including the Captain himself, who is famously taciturn, or a great imagination in which case his tale is not entirely reliable (though this is never suggested by the narration itself). Such reports as he provides are jarring because they seem to sap the logic of the narrative.

Still, the book proceeds swiftly and engages both in terms of plot and its capacity for recreating the era of Spanish imperial decline. We get a rich sense of what Spain in the early 17th century might have been like, of the swaggering caballeros, hidalgos, poets and other courtly hangers on who prance and mince about the towns and countryside, engaging in various schemes and preening themselves for the ladies. Along with the fast paced action which occasionally kicks in, and the fun trying to unravel the mystery that lies behind the Captain's latest situation, the book is certainly worthwhile. I plan to read the next in the series.

SWM

Other swashbucklers:

The Fencing Master
With Fire and Sword
Musashi: An Epic Novel of the Samurai Era
The King of Vinland's Saga

While I enjoyed the book I didn't enjoy it as much as Captain Alatriste. The ending seemed a little abrupt as if Perez-Reverte had a page limit and had to get the story over with a little too soon.

Purity of Blood starts off in a thrilling fashion with Captain Alatriste hired to rescue a young woman from a corrupt convent in 17th century Spain. It goes along nicely for awhile but then begins to drag at the end. The ending is rather quick and not much of a payoff.

The historical fiction elements add some appeal but cannot overcome the ending. However, I am looking forward to future books as this is the second of a purported seven book series.

I like Perez-Reverte: If you have not read any of his books don't start here, start with the Flanders Panel or Seville Communion or Queen of the South or Club Dumas. Very good books all. Purity of Blood is the second of a probable series of books whose hero, an out of work soldier in the Madrid of the 1600s, a blade for hire, with personal morals above the ordinary, ethics better than the times, is a brooding dark figure that comes across as a "we've seen it before" hero of no newness or excitement. The story is narrated by a 13 year old boy who is apprenticing, in a sense, to the captain. The fact that in the early part of the book the boy continually refers to future adventures in his later life that he promises to tell us about comes over as 1) a repeating advertisement for future books 2) sort of ruins the suspense as to if he will be burned at the stake by the Inquisition when he is captured during a planned rescue attempt requiring a break in to a convent.
Perez-Reverte always does his research well and the book is most interesting/useful for the insight into life during the early 1600s when Spain the powerful is slipping away from poor management, weak leadership, bad economics; written by a Spanish author looking back at a sad and embarrassing time in Spanish history. This book is barely a 3, but an improvement over the last book.
This may be a a case where a movie could be better than the original book.

The second in this series of swashbucklers in the grand tradition of "The Three Musketeers" goes deep to the heart of the evil of the Spanish Inquisition. The hero, grizzled old army veteran Diego Alatriste, gets mixed up in a plot to rescue a young girl from a convent where she is being abused by priests. It turns out to be a trap and his ward, 13-year-old Inigo Balboa, who narrates these books, falls into the arms of the Inquisition.

Alatriste is of course a master swordsman but it will take politics to get the boy out of the hole he is in.

The climax is a masterful and chilling depiction of an auto da fe, where so called heretics are burned alive for the enjoyment of the Madrid crowd from the Royal Family down.

Right now, I'm also reading "In the First Circle" by Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn and I was struck by the similarity of the descriptions of judicial proceedings under Stalin and in 17th century Spain. People are denounced and rounded up for no reason and tortured until they confess to whatever the interrogator wants them to. They are never charged with a specific crime. The Inquisitors are intent on rooting out anyone with a smidgen of Jewish blood, even if their families converted (or were forcibly converted) to Christianity centuries before. So we see the Inquisition was the godfather of Hitler as well as Stalin.

The reader can enjoy these books for the colorful characters, the dazzling swordplay, the doomed love interest (Inigo at 13 is already in love with the beautiful but evil Angelica, a director literary descendant of Dumas' Milady.) We are also offered a convincing picture of Spanish society under Philip IV -- the poetry, the theater, the royal court and the underside of society too. But there is more. Arturo Perez-Reverte is offering us a portrait of a society that is utterly sick -- rotten to the core, corrupted by hatred and intolerance -- and society destined to fall into terminal decline. A society that warms itself by burning its fellow citizens will eventually burn itself out.

This book is an easy read but it leaves a lasting impression.

This Captain Alatriste story has the wrong title. It should be, "Inigo Balboa Goes to Jail." However, the hero of the tale is neither Inigo nor the Captain. Rather it is don Francisco de Quevedo, who, like in an old oater western, literally rides into Madrid at the last second to save the boy from being burned alive at the hands of the hateful, fanatical, evil villains of the Inquisition, focused on Jews and "heretics" in all its disgusting, holocaust mentality and conduct.

And, once again (as in other Alatriste novels, the Captain, except for one thrilling knife fight in an alley, does little to move the story forward or contribute to the resolution of the dilemma. In fact, his several errors led to difficult complications for all the good guys. As for bravery, 13-year old Inigo -- alone -- gets the Oscar. There are no other nominees. Alatriste is shown as hardly an able swordsman, hardly smart enough to foresee catastrophe, and so enamored with Inigo as to make mistake after mistake in seeking the boy's release from prison. I remain puzzled as to the source of Alatriste's reputation as an ideal combatant.

While the Captain, Inigo, de Quevedo and others in the large cast of players who colorfully populate the tale, "Purity of Blood" is a novel not about them, but actually about the Spanish Inquisition in the early 1600's. The book furthers Perez-Reverte's long-lasting, continuing strong commentary about the demise of Spanish influence and culture, as it took a slippery slope ride toward oblivion.

True to his career-long theme and style as a novelist, Perez-Reverte does not disappoint here in his scathing and vicious telling (all well-deserved, of course, even if only in a novel) of the corrupt, dastardly Catholic Church, its Inquisition, and the impotence, complicity and incompetence of the then-ruling Spanish officials. I don't know if Perez-Reverte simply -- for his own reasons -- mourns the loss of the real Spain back then or if he just delights in a furious indictment of Spain's embarrassing history of cruelty and stupidity. Nonetheless, this theme of anti-Spanish government and anti-Church everything defines all of his novels. He writes with gusto and believability (even in novel format) from his heart and gut. He's a pleasure to read, of course.

Page 139. "...although all men are capable of good and evil, the worst among them are those who, when they commit evil, do so by shielding themselves in the authority of others, in their subordination, or in the excuse of following orders. And even worse are those who believe they are justified by their God.....And worst of all is the person who acts as exegete of The Word - whether it be from the Talmud, the Bible, the Koran, or any other book already written or yet to come.... Never trust a man who reads only one book."

My only real problem with this novel, despite its slow-moving beginning, was its "voice." Ostensibly narrated by Inigo, the book leaves a reader wondering -- about half the time -- why Inigo is still the narrator about events and facts that he could not have witnessed, due to his being in prison in Toledo. I found this flaw distracting and, for me, it was a major obstacle to my complete enjoyment of the book. There are other literary techniques which Perez-Reverte could have employed to allow the story to have its first-person feel without pretending that the boy had seen and heard all (that he did not and could not have) to maintain his phantom role as narrator. It just didn't make sense that Inigo remained the narrator throughout the novel.

True to course, there are many memorable lines (Page 69, "...the problem with words is that once spoken, they cannot find their way back to the speaker alone."), and I made lots of notes in the margin to look up words I do not ordinarily use or know, often from Spanish or Latin. (pustule, chasuble, quiddity, embrasure, jeremiad, for example). Perez-Reverte is sometimes a tough read with his wide-ranging vocabulary and big sweep of intellectual-historical topics, but always worth it - with dictionary in hand or Wikipedia at the ready. The quoted poetry, however, is always a bit much for my tastes.

Nonetheless, it is a good story, and the last half moves quickly. So, if you want your "fix" of anti-Catholic rhetoric, a strong and awful history lesson of the futility of lasting empires, and a sort-of mystery/swashbuckler cape-and-sword-story, then read it! It's not his greatest story or writing. His masterful "The Seville Communion," the sensational " Queen of the South," to say nothing of "Nautical Chart," "Club Dumas," "Fencing Master," " The Sun Over Breda" (but NOT "Painter of Battles") are far, far better.

I am a big fan and Arturo Perez-Reverte. He is one of my favorite contemporary authors. He is brilliant, erudite and a wonderful writer. I will read him anytime, anywhere, always smiling at his anti-Catholic Church rantings and ravings and his solemn melancholy retrospective at a once-great Spain sadly lost long, long ago.