Captain Alatriste Books in Order

The Captain Alatriste Series is a celebrated historical swashbuckling adventure series written by Spanish author and journalist Arturo Pérez-Reverte, set in the turbulent, glorious, and slowly decaying Spain of the early seventeenth century — the Spain of Philip IV, of Lope de Vega and Quevedo, of the last gasps of imperial greatness and the first signs of irreversible decline. Captain Diego Alatriste y Tenorio is a former soldier fallen on hard times who survives in Madrid as a paid sword-for-hire — not quite an assassin, but a man who will take dangerous or morally dubious work when the money is right and the cause is not entirely dishonourable. He is accompanied by his ward Íñigo Balboa, the teenage son of a dead comrade, who narrates the series from the vantage point of old age.

Pérez-Reverte writes with evident passion for the period — the Madrid of cramped streets, taverns, theatres, and court intrigue; the battlefields of Flanders; the literary world of the Golden Age — and his recreation of seventeenth-century Spanish life has the density and authenticity of serious historical fiction combined with the pace and action of adventure storytelling. The books are notably literary for the genre: Quevedo and Lope de Vega appear as characters, and the prose has an elegance that reflects Pérez-Reverte's background as a literary novelist.

Comprising 7 novels published from 1996 to 2011, the series has sold millions of copies in Spain and been translated into over twenty languages. A Spanish film adaptation was released in 2006. Must be read in order — Íñigo's narration assumes knowledge of previous events. Begin with Captain Alatriste (Book 1).