For all the author’s customary elegance, this is one of the weaker novels in the series.
The fourth in Pérez-Reverte’s series of five historicals about the Spanish Captain Alatriste (The Sun Over Breda, 2007, etc.) is long on ambiance but short on plot.
It’s 1626 and Captain Alatriste and Íñigo Balboa are arriving back in Spain after fighting in Flanders. Alatriste is now middle-aged, still laconic and increasingly world-weary, but as deadly as ever in battle. Balboa has come of age and is a practiced swordsman himself, thanks to Alatriste’s tutelage. The Captain has been his surrogate father since his own father died on the battlefield. On reaching Seville, Alatriste receives a new assignment. The treasure fleet, bringing riches from the New World, is expected very soon. One galleon is carrying gold ingots in secret; the property of the Treasury is being unlawfully diverted. The court has gotten wind of the scheme, however; Alatriste must recruit a band of ruffians to retrieve the loot. That assault on the rogue galleon does not come until the end. In the interim the author shows us a corrupt society, awash in money, on “a slow road to nowhere.” Spain, heedless of its soldiers’ sacrifices, is “rarely a mother and more often a wicked stepmother.” Yet Alatriste and his young disciple are themselves incorruptible, believing in honor and unwavering allegiance to the king, a tension at the heart of the story. Balboa is also in love, bewitched by his contemporary Angélica, maid of honor to the Queen, a love which almost costs him his life during a dangerous nocturnal tryst. That scene, and another in which Alatriste scares a corrupt merchant half to death, constitute the only action before the climax, and it’s not enough. Just as disappointing is the author’s refusal to penetrate the “personal wilderness” of the brooding Alatriste, a failure that is not disguised by the quirky charm of the interpolated snatches of verse, some of them from the celebrated playwright Lope de Vega.
For all the author’s customary elegance, this is one of the weaker novels in the series.Pub Date: Aug. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-399-15510-9
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2008
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.
Sisters work together to solve a child-abandonment case.
Ellie and Julia Cates have never been close. Julia is shy and brainy; Ellie gets by on charm and looks. Their differences must be tossed aside when a traumatized young girl wanders in from the forest into their hometown in Washington. The sisters’ professional skills are put to the test. Julia is a world-renowned child psychologist who has lost her edge. She is reeling from a case that went publicly sour. Though she was cleared of all wrongdoing, Julia’s name was tarnished, forcing her to shutter her Beverly Hills practice. Ellie Barton is the local police chief in Rain Valley, who’s never faced a tougher case. This is her chance to prove she is more than just a fading homecoming queen, but a scarcity of clues and a reluctant victim make locating the girl’s parents nearly impossible. Ellie places an SOS call to her sister; she needs an expert to rehabilitate this wild-child who has been living outside of civilization for years. Confronted with her professional demons, Julia once again has the opportunity to display her talents and salvage her reputation. Hannah (The Things We Do for Love, 2004, etc.) is at her best when writing from the girl’s perspective. The feral wolf-child keeps the reader interested long after the other, transparent characters have grown tiresome. Hannah’s torturously over-written romance passages are stale, but there are surprises in store as the sisters set about unearthing Alice’s past and creating a home for her.
Wacky plot keeps the pages turning and enduring schmaltzy romantic sequences.Pub Date: March 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-345-46752-3
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2005
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.
A violent surfacing of adolescence (which has little in common with Tarkington's earlier, broadly comic, Seventeen) has a compulsive impact.
"Nobody big except me" is the dream world of Holden Caulfield and his first person story is down to the basic, drab English of the pre-collegiate. For Holden is now being bounced from fancy prep, and, after a vicious evening with hall- and roommates, heads for New York to try to keep his latest failure from his parents. He tries to have a wild evening (all he does is pay the check), is terrorized by the hotel elevator man and his on-call whore, has a date with a girl he likes—and hates, sees his 10 year old sister, Phoebe. He also visits a sympathetic English teacher after trying on a drunken session, and when he keeps his date with Phoebe, who turns up with her suitcase to join him on his flight, he heads home to a hospital siege. This is tender and true, and impossible, in its picture of the old hells of young boys, the lonesomeness and tentative attempts to be mature and secure, the awful block between youth and being grown-up, the fright and sickness that humans and their behavior cause the challenging, the dramatization of the big bang. It is a sorry little worm's view of the off-beat of adult pressure, of contemporary strictures and conformity, of sentiment….
A strict report, worthy of sympathy.Pub Date: June 15, 1951
ISBN: 0316769177
Page Count: -
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1951
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