This sounds like stirring stuff and it is. You can almost smell the heat and dust, see the swaggering caballeros and witness the seething politics of the time. Real-life folk mix with fictional characters, and the style of narrative in the old adventure stories the author admires has been wonderfully captured. Unlike some old-time authors Perez-Reverte has not tried to make Spain's "Golden Age" seem too idyllic, just the calm before the storm. Young Inigo tells the tale, looking back on it all from some undisclosed point in the far future. He constantly holds up the action and lush descriptions to bemoan the plight of the Spanish people and remind us of what is to come some years later, none of which is germane to the exciting tale of derring-do that is unfolding. He does this repeatedly, and thus the action loses momentum and nothing is actually gained, leaving me wondering why this author has devoted so much page space in a short novel to these maunderings. But all this notwithstanding, this is a fine book that more than whets (fills?satisfies?) my appetite for the rest of the series.