The Sun Over Breda
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3.9 • 10 Ratings
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- $4.99
Publisher Description
The third swashbuckling adventure in the internationally acclaimed Captain Alatriste series.
Fifteen-year-old Iñigo Balboa enlists to serve as his master’s aide, and narrates their further adventures of swordplay and skirmishes, mutiny and wartime honor, as Captain Alatriste rejoins his Cartagena regiment to take part in the battles and siege of Breda. In Spain, Alatriste’s nemesis, Luis de Alquézar, grows more powerful, as Iñigo’s mysterious friend Angélica hints at some plans upon his return. Once again the exploits of the seventeenth-century mercenary will thrill and delight the legions of readers eager to cheer a hero for the ages.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
A former war correspondent, Spanish novelist P rez-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 igo 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 P rez-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.
