Purity of Blood
Purity of Blood book cover

Purity of Blood

Hardcover – January 5, 2006

by
Price
$15.61
Format
Hardcover
Pages
267
Publisher
Putnam Adult
Publication Date
ISBN-13
978-0399153204
Dimensions
5.76 x 1.07 x 8.5 inches
Weight
15.2 ounces

Description

From Publishers Weekly Those looking for seriously entertaining thrills will welcome Pérez-Reverte's second 17th-century Spanish swashbuckler featuring the exploits of stoic, honorable Capt. Diego Alatriste (after 2005's Captain Alatriste ). A father and two brothers accompany Alatriste on a mission to rescue their sister from the convent in which she has been imprisoned. Things go wrong when an old enemy of the captain ensures that Alatriste's ward, 13-year-old Inigo Balboa, falls into the hands of the Inquisition. With the aid of the great Spanish poet Francisco de Quevedo, all is made right. Rich in historical detail and sardonic observations, the narrative begins leisurely. The pace picks up, but the action is never so breathless as to sweep the reader along, as with Captain Alatriste . Still, this will matter little to fans, who are sure to look forward to further installments in the series. (Jan.) Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. From Bookmarks Magazine In yet another example of our trade deficit, the United States continues to do well by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. His books, The Club Dumas , The Seville Communion , and The Fencing Master , all translated from the Spanish, have gotten quite cozy with our domestic best-seller lists. So last year Putnam launched the Captain Alatriste series, previously published in Pérez-Revertex92s native Spain, with the first volume, Captain Alatriste (**** Selection Sept/Oct 2005). Critics praised this second installment for its taut plotting, sense of place, and old-fashioned derring-do. Good news for fans of the series: three more installments await translation, and the author has committed to rounding it out to a lucky seven titles. Copyright © 2004 Phillips & Nelson Media, Inc. From Booklist Spanish novelist Perez-Reverte is known the world over for his historical thrillers, and now his earlier five-novel historical-fiction series, the Adventures of Captain Alatriste, all of which were huge best sellers in his native Spain, is being published in the U.S. for the first time, one volume at a time. Captain Alatriste (2005) was the first to appear, and now the second installment makes its American debut. The novels are set in seventeenth-century Spain, centered in the Spanish capital--during the time when the glitter of the Spanish empire was already showing itself to be thin and worn ("the dark, violent, and contradictory Spain of our Catholic king Philip IV"). Captain Diego Alatriste, a veteran of Spain's foreign wars, is currently a sword for hire. On this occasion, in this completely absorbing novel that, like the first one in the series, absolutely defines swashbuckling , he is contracted to help a man from a Jewish-turned-Catholic family rescue his daughter from behind the thick walls of a Madrid convent, which the chaplain "has turned . . . into his private seraglio." This novel is written in the mold of Dumas' musketeer novels and excitingly upholds the tradition. Brad Hooper Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved ...hard-boiled, mordantly funny, [and] unapologetically entertaining... -- Time , January 16, 2006 On the whole... Purity of Blood hits the high note of Captain Alatriste and sustains the series' uncommon verve. -- New York Times , January 26, 2006 Perez-Reverte...offers a flamboyant doff of a frowzily plumed hat here to the clanking adventure tales of his youth. -- Washington Post , March 1, 2006 Arturo Pérez-Reverte lives near Madrid. Originally a war journalist, he now writes fiction full-time. His novels have been published in fifty countries. In 2002, he was elected to the Spanish Royal Academy. Read more

Features & Highlights

  • Hired to rescue a man's daughter from a convent where a powerful corrupt priest is forcing her to be his personal concubine, Alatriste finds himself thrust into a religious and political conspiracy with ties to the highest levels of the Inquisition. 80,000 first printing.

Customer Reviews

Rating Breakdown

★★★★★
30%
(63)
★★★★
25%
(53)
★★★
15%
(32)
★★
7%
(15)
★
22%
(47)

Most Helpful Reviews

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A knight without armor in a savage land

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
30 people found this helpful
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Perez Reverte is Good but No Alexandre Dumas

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.
20 people found this helpful
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more 'history' than story in this historical novel

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."
13 people found this helpful
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An atmospheric swashbuckler

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
6 people found this helpful
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Interesting account of the working of the Spanish Inquisition

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.
6 people found this helpful
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Could be reworked into a movie script; not a great book

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.
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Translation from Spanish!

Had to read a lot between the lines as the translation from Spanish diluted much of the poetry and cadence of the original. It was a little difficult to read and I had to skip "descriptive" portions and just stick to the plot, which was O.K.
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Savory Second

Arturo Perez-Reverte moves seamlessly between past, present, and future. I savored the second in the Alatriste series, which features a rematch between our hero and his arch enemy Malatesta as well as the horror of Inigo's chilling imprisonment. The evil machinations of the Inquisition are of particular interest as our government debates the legality of torture.

My favorite sections of these books are the sly verses by poets who served as the Jon Stewarts of their day.

And I just can't wait for the 2006 movie with Viggo Mortensen - from Aragorn to Alatriste!
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Didn't meet expectations

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.
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If you like Dumas, you will love this book.

The latest entry into the Captain Alatriste series is an excellent one. If you have read any of this authors other books, you'll know that while he writes a great fight scene, its all about mood and character. This isn't a hard core action book, but rather takes its time to tell an engaging tale with a few nice twists thrown in.

A great read, although reading Captain Alatriste first will help you. I also recommend his book, The Fencing Master.
1 people found this helpful

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