Tuesday, May 3, 2016

The Cavalier in the Yellow Doublet - Arturo Pérez-Reverte

A quick relevant story before I review.

So as you may remember, back in September 2011 I had an uncontrolled Borders Last Days Sale book grab, bringing home more than 75 books over 2 days. The second shopping day alone had to be close to 50 books.

As I was checking out on the second (and last) day, the guy ringing up my purchases looked at me and said, "Are you really going to read all these books?"

My reply: "Eventually." At the time, even I thought it was kind of unlikely, but here I am almost 5 years later and in fact out of all those books only 8 are left on the TBR pile - I just counted. So that's pretty good, all things considered!

As you may have guessed, this book was one of the 75+ books I brought home from that spree. Of course, I was thrilled because it had "yellow" in the title, so I could use it for the always-fun Color Coded Reading Challenge... or so I thought. As it happens, it's the 5th book in a series, and yes, it took me 5 years to get those previous books read so I could finally read this one and stop scrambling to find a substitute for the "yellow" category. So I took my time, but I have finally accomplished this goal - hooray!

This book was a return to form as far as I'm concerned - it was much more enjoyable for me, as it centers around intrigue and not war/battles. To be sure, there are fisticuffs and swordplay and etc., but also palace intrigue and schemers and plotters and jilted lovers and double-crossers. It would make a fun movie, and I think it could stand alone if necessary. In fact, I could probably have read this book without reading the first 4 and not missed much - but I'd still rather stick to my sticklerish ways and just read the whole thing, rather than possibly miss some crucial information, etc. (it's just how my brain works). So all in all, this book was worth the wait.

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