1 of 1 members found this review helpful.
“I actually liked this story, what there was of it. The book follows an attempted rescue gone wrong, descending into the horror of its consequences, and the desperate attempts to set things to the right. Along the way are tantalizing clues of things yet to come (presumably in a subsequent book), as the narrator, Íñigo Balboa, is telling the story as an old man looking back into his youth.
Pérez-Reverte tells a good story, one that keeps you reading until the end, despite whatever distaste you may have for his polemics. Sadly, the tale is bogged down by bad poetry (always described in the book, curiously, as coming from the pen of a mastter poet), and extended indictments of the Spanish church of the 17th century. It is almost as if the author was more interested in denouncing religion than in telling a good story, for, while he does succeed in doing the latter, in terms of pure page count, he spends much more time and energy doing the former. Fortunately, I was able to overlook such things, and enjoy the story at hand.
I have seen Pérez-Reverte's writing described as adventuresome and romantic, and while the latter is certainly accurate, the former could not be further from the truth. In fact, the author seems intent on abolishing any semblance of romance in this novel, despite his obvious taste for swashbuckling. A description of the style of Francisco de Quevedo, a Spanish poet of the age who is also one of Pérez-Reverte's characters in Purity of Blood, can be accurately applied to the style of this book as well: it "shows the...vision its author had of men, a vision sometimes deformed by a sharp, cruel, violently critical nature". I can only say that, curiously enough, Captain Diego Alatriste, the novel's main character, is repeatedly lauded for his mercenary and unscrupulous ways; a rather strange antiheroic romanticism that is puzzling beside such heartfelt attacks on corruption. It appears that certain corruptions can be forgiven, while others cannot.
All told, this was a pretty good story, but not a very well-written book. I very much enjoyed the flavor of Golden Age Spain, as much work as the author did to point out the filth in its landscape. If you want Spanish adventure stories, I'd recommend, instead, the much better written works of Carlos Ruiz Zafón. ”
Michael wrote this review Wednesday, July 29 2009.
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