This is the third in Perez-Reverte's 'Captain Alatriste' series, however, I felt that the author was inspired to write this book mostly out of a desire to write a book about the Siege of Breda and Velasquez' painting 'The Surrender of Breda', not because the events forward the ongoing story of Diego Alatriste and his squire (the narrator) Inigo. It almost seems random that these two characters are here, at these battles - they could almost be any two characters. (We don't get any more progress in Inigo's tragic(?) obsession with the beautiful Angelica de Alquezar, either). That said, however, if one is interested in a historical novel of Spain set during the Thirty Years' War, and a well-researched, interesting account of a soldier's life during those times, this is quite a good book.

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Less of an adventure story than the other Alatriste novels I've read, this one is more a lament for the plight of the Spanish infantryman of the time as he represents the common man, the spanish character, and the common solider. Good and well-written, but not as delightful or entertaining a read as the others.

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The Captain Alatriste swashbuckler series are "Perez-Reverte-lite"--much more straight-forward and visually graphic than his more complex, cerebral novels. This episode has Alatriste and Inigo, his faithful young 'aide de camp' back in the ranks of the Spanish infantry tercios, fighting the heretics in the Low Countries. Of the first four volumes in the series, this is the most action-packed, with combat on nearly every page, and Inigo growing from boy to man to soldier in each paragraph. Perez-Reverte makes a good case that the Spanish were the best infantry of their day (early 17th Century), despite their venile nobility and failing empire. As in all Perez-Reverte novels, we get provocative foreshadowing of adventures and mystries to come; in this case Inigo's ties to Valasquez and the ever-alluring, ever-deadly Angelia de Alquezar, whose letter to Inigo on the battlefields of Flanders, ends PS "I rejoice that you are still alive. I have plans for you." As does, we suspect, Perez-Reverte for his faithful readers.

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