Category Archives: buckle on your swashes

Pirate Books and Comics

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Today is Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Arr!
Marvel published a comic-rendered version of Treasure Island. This is crazy! Full-color throughout, glossy pages, hardcover. I dug up this booty at the Goodwill for 50c, but the list price is $19.99
I’m enjoying this, complete with its Hiii-Yaaahs and googley-eyed parrots.

 

 

 

 

Bjorn Larsson continues Long John Silver’s story in his novel, Long John Silver, English translation published in 1999 in Great Britain. I found this at the used book store. I’ve started reading this, it reads nicely, an is written as though an autobiography.

The latest Captain Alatriste adventure, the English translation published in 2010, is Pirates of the Levant. ’nuff said.

More pirate books and music and political parties and stuff coming later today.

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I. J. Parker

I love samurais. I like the action and the honor and the beautiful backdrop of Japan. Hubs and I watched another samurai movie and it occurred to me that there are probably books out there about samurais! Go figure! So I went online and found an author, I.J. Parker, who has written a whole series of books set in eleventh century Japan. The main character, Akitada, solves some mysteries and we learn a little about life in his era.

So I looked at my library and stumbled on a whole section of them! Who knew? I have only read a little historical fiction, mostly about US presidents or the old west. This is my first waaay-back historical fiction series, and I love it.

Akitada is extremely identifiable as a person. Even in eleventh century Japan, mothers can be difficult, work sucks, money is tight, etc. I am only 50 pages into Rashomon Gate (the first I found but technically the second in the series) but I love it. The characters are rounded, the backdrop is beautiful (spring in ancient Kyoto!), and the mystery is delicious. So far, only 50 pages in, there are already two big mysteries to solve. Akitada is intelligent, kind, respectful, and lots of other adjectives. His servant (a reformed highwayman) is a street smart clever man that perfectly compliments Akitada’s book smarts and polished people skills. I know I’ll read all of these. It’s a nice light story; a good plot but nothing too heavy to wade through or traumatic to get over. I even emailed Ms. Parker, and she responded right away! She told me that she will hopefully have more books for e-readers soon, probably the kindle. I look forward to that.

In short, I went out and tried something new. If you want to try something new, something out of the ordinary, something not in your TBR pile, try out some mystery in ancient Japan. Start with Dragon’s Scroll or Rashomon Gate. You will not be disappointed.

Captain Alatriste

Buckle on your Swashes! It’s time for one of my favorite authors.

Swashbuckling. Twirling Moustaches. Hidden Passages. Swords, daggers, poinards, and pistols. Tri-lingual puns. Destitute and out-of-work bored ex-soldiers. The Inqusition…

It’s sixteen-hundred-twenty-something and Phillip the Fourth is the King of Spain.

Captain Alatriste has recently returned from the war in Flanders to find that he is now the primary caregiver to a thirteen-year-old boy, Íñigo, the son of his best buddy in the Flemmish war. More recently, he’s been released from prison where he was a “guest” of the King for non-payment of debts. Captain Alatriste is chatting it up, post-prison-style, in the local bar when he is made an offer he simply can’t refuse…

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Written by bestselling author, Arturo Pérez-Reverte, Captain Alatriste is the first of a series of six (thus far) rather short novels set in the early 17th century Spain, a Spain that was reading Don Quixote, pulling in chests of cash from its “Interests” in the Americas, engaging in and dealing with pirates, picking fights with the other national bodies of Europe… In short, a time ripe with adventure.

I went into these thinking, oh gosh! What a great series of swashbuckling brain candy! Nope. Amongst some of the over-the-top moments (they really do twirl their moustashes) are the real ills of the day. The Conquest of the Americas vies with The Inqusition as the most horrid thing man-kind has done to itself. Íñigo and Alatriste live in a land immolating itself on the twin daggers of poverty and corruption. Women are resigned to the same old shit they’ve always had to deal with. But these are not lectures, no, a Pérez-Reverte novel is a work of engaging wonder.

Pérez-Reverte also writes several other non-serials, fictions about secret histories of art and books and lost chapters of history. (Kinda like The Davinci Code but with more stuff and less fluff.) In some of these others, such as The Queen of the South and The Nautical Chart the women get in difficult situations but are not waiting to be rescued. They are, actually, agents of their own futures, often the character with the secret, double-crossing agenda. Nice.

In all of his books that I’ve read (four, I think), Pérez-Reverte has me looking up references in Wikipedia, searching for places in Google Earth, and pulling out the big, fat Spanish dictionary. He tells the What-If story that lies in the shadow behind the very real work of art, the collection of 17th c nautical maps in the Barcelona library, the bits that were edited out of the Jesuits’ reports. Yeah! I love this!

In Captain Alatriste, Íñigo tells us that Diego Velásquez included The Captain in his painting, Surrender of Breda, that Alatriste is there, “behind the horse”. Cue Wikipedia, and we have…

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