Arturo Perez-Reverte and The Adventures of Captain Alatriste.

It seems right on Veterans Day to review the swashbuckling and harrowing novels of the 17th century Spanish swordsman, veteran of the Thirty Years War, and sometime royal assassin, Captain Alatriste written by Arturo Pérez-Reverte. Pérez-Reverte deftly combines the heroic tale of a charismatic swordsman, a wry social history of a corrupt Spanish Empire, and a coming of age story for the novel's narrator, Iñgio Balboa, the orphaned son of a fallen soldier now apprentice to Alatriste as a page.

And what a figure Captain Alatriste cuts throughout these novels: tall and slim, wrapped in his cape, with a sword and long dagger at his side, his face shadowed by the broad brim of a felt hat, an aquiline nose, huge mustache, and blazing eyes. "He was not the most honest or pious of men, but he was courageous...It was one of Diego Alatriste's virtues that he could make friends in Hell," Iñgio tells us in the introduction. His title of Captain, more complimentary than official, was bestowed on him by the men who fought at his side one winter in Holland. His legendary skills with the sword have attracted the attention of the king, his scheming advisers, the Inquisition, and an Italian assassin with a score to settle.

Each novel centers on a different facet of Spain's history, offering in broad brush strokes a glimpse into the contradictions of the Glorious Empire. Captain Alatriste introduces us to the world of court intrigues, plots and counter plots, disguised kings, and the ability of a swordsman to make powerful enemies for following his own code of honor. Purity of Blood pits Alatriste and Iñgio against the combined forces of the Inquisition and the royal advisers seeking to acquire the wealth and lands of prominent families.

The Sun Over Breda finds Alatriste and Iñgio returned to the battlefields of Holland, where they survive the brutal seige at Breda and Iñgio comes of age in the bloody fields of Holland. It is the most military of the three novels -- and certainly, the bloodiest. But it also reveals why the Spanish soldiers were the most feared across Europe -- even when they were half starved and abandoned by a King who took them for granted. The King's Gold returns them to Spain, veterans without work. Captain Alatriste is called upon to secretly steal a shipment of gold for the King that is being smuggled into the Spain by corrupt officials to the Crown. Perhaps one of the most interesting scenes of this novel takes place in Seville's prison -- where Alatriste spends a night celebrating the life of an infamous ruffian on the eve of his execution.

The novels also ground their stories in Spain's rich literary and artistic culture -- famous dueling poets of the time such as Don Francisco de Quevedo drink and fight alongside Alatriste, composing poems even as they are fighting. (An appendix at the end of the novels provides us with more poems from these well known authors of the time.) Iñgio is reading Cervantes' Don Quixote as he is marching through the battlefields of Holland and later, he will try to give advice to the court painter Diego Velázquez, whose enormous painting "The Surrender at Breda" depicts more myth than fact.

Iñgio Balboa, the narrator, is a terrific voice in the novels. An old man, he is recounting his youth and apprenticeship with Alatriste, seasoned with witty, sardonic, and poignant observations of the decline of his once powerful nation. When he relates the battles of Breda he does so as a soldier in visceral, vivid language that is at once robust, filled with pride but tinged with melancholy at the enormity of the sacrifice: "And nine years later, in Madrid, standing before Diego Velázquez's panorama, it seemed I could hear again the drum and that I was watching, amid the forts and smoking trenches in the distance, near Breda, the slow advance of the old, implacable squads, the pikes and standards of what was the last and best infantry in the world: despised, cruel, arrogant Spaniards discipline only when under fire, who suffered everything in any assault but would allow no man to raise his voice to them."

And if you really want to have fun after reading these novels, rent the Spanish production of the film, Captain Alatriste (which sort of condenses all four novels into one story) with the perfectly cast Viggo Mortenson performing in Spanish. There is a lot of meddling with the original stories -- starting with all the love interests...but what the hell...it's Viggo. Here's the knockout trailer in English: