Zarita is used to bask­ing in the pam­pered lifestyle being the only daugh­ter of the town mag­is­trate affords; she is free to roam the town as she likes, con­sort with the son of a noble­man and spend her days study­ing the arts. Saulo’s fam­ily have fallen on hard times, and when his father is hanged for an assault on Zarita he did not com­mit and Saulo is hauled off to be a slave at sea, Saulo swears revenge. But when Zarita’s mother dies in child­birth, and the for­mi­da­ble and fright­en­ing Inqui­si­tion arrives in the area, a cur­tain of sus­pi­cion and bru­tal­ity comes down on her old life for good. Saulo may believe that Zarita is his sworn enemy, but in a time when the whole of Spain is in tur­moil, are him and Zarita each other’s only hope of survival?’

Pris­oner of the Inqui­si­tion is good choice for those who enjoy his­tor­i­cal fic­tion. It’s rich in detail and Bres­lin really cap­tures the atmos­phere of the time, the reli­gion, the pol­i­tics, the ins and outs of every­day life, as well as life at sea in the 1400’s. 

The story is told through two nar­ra­tives, Zarita’s story in Spain with the Inqui­si­tion clos­ing in and Saulo’s, sold as a gal­ley rat aboard a ship as a con­se­quence of Zarita’s actions. For the major­ity of the book, this duel nar­ra­tive works quite well, with each story unique and engag­ing enough to make the switch back­wards and for­wards between the two less jar­ring then it oth­er­wise could have been. It’s when these two nar­ra­tives come together towards the end that it becomes tedious, as we start to have small, incon­se­quen­tial scenes told twice over from each char­ac­ters point of view (mostly how attrac­tive they find the other and the idle chitchat between them). With noth­ing to really dis­tin­guish between them at this point, Pris­oner of the Inqui­si­tion does start to become repet­i­tive and sadly ends rather abruptly, slop­pily and far too sweetly.

After fin­ish­ing this book I almost felt like it was cut far, far, too short. I wanted to read about Saulo’s adven­tures at sea, dis­cov­er­ing new worlds, and actu­ally see him grow into a con­fi­dent, suc­cess­ful young man, who has found his place in the world. In a short space of time it seems Saulo sud­denly grows up and learns all about sail­ing and nav­i­gat­ing but we don’t actu­ally get to expe­ri­ence much of it. The same could be said of Zarita, but in her case I would have liked far more focus on the Inqui­si­tion, the ter­ror and dan­ger of liv­ing at such a time, and, more impor­tantly, on her actual trial rather than a plot line involv­ing her step­mother, who felt a lit­tle bit like a Dis­ney vil­lain. I would have loved for Bres­lin to really explore the hor­rors and injus­tice of the Inqui­si­tion and fol­low through on that excel­lent prologue.

It is within the last 90 pages where Pris­oner of the Inqui­si­tion falls down. Once these two char­ac­ters meet, we have a fairly bland, pre­dictable, romance that is rushed and unnec­es­sary. I had enjoyed fol­low­ing these two char­ac­ters who, despite hav­ing never actu­ally met, are strangely con­nected, their lives dri­ven off course and hugely influ­enced by the other. Given their his­tory, any rela­tion­ship between them needed to be explored slowly and devel­oped over time. It could have been a very inter­est­ing dynamic, but it is tagged onto the end of the novel and instead reads very much like a young person’s ideal of romance, i.e the dreaded ‘insta-love’. All very intense within an hour or two of meet­ing and based com­pletely on looks alone.

What makes Pris­oner of the Inqui­si­tion a com­pelling book is all the lit­tle tid­bits of infor­ma­tion about life in the 1400’s that are woven into the story. It has a strong sense of place and Bres­lin clearly knows her his­tory. Pris­oner of the Inqui­si­tion pays far more atten­tion to his­tor­i­cal detail than many of its YA coun­ter­parts with far less time spent on a clichéd, typ­i­cal romance. How­ever, I have to admit to find­ing the writ­ing style a lit­tle dry in regards to the char­ac­ters and dia­logue. I felt dis­tanced from them and couldn’t con­nect with any­one. Zarita’s story is set right bang in the mid­dle of the Inqui­si­tion but I never felt any of the ris­ing ten­sion or fear that this should have brought to the story.

Bres­lin also has the ten­dency to spell every­thing out to the reader. We don’t need to be told the exact work­ings of Father Besian’s mind by Zarita’s Aunt (who, as a char­ac­ter, seems to exist mainly to explain all the other character’s feel­ings or actions), or why he focuses on Bar­tolome as an exam­ple — we can infer that for our­selves. Not only does this slow the story down, it is unnec­es­sary and made Zarita look sim­ple and fool­ish for not being able to grasp what was going on for her­self with­out her Aunt to con­tin­u­ally guide her.

I found Zarita spoilt, tire­some and naive and though we are lit­er­ally told sev­eral times she has matured into a wise young woman, I never saw much evi­dence of this. I liked Saulo more, as a child and on board the ship. Although, his drive for revenge is non-existent for the major­ity of his story, only appear­ing again when it is con­ve­nient to the plot, and so wasn’t overly believ­able. Once he returns to Spain, his char­ac­ter rotates between hunt­ing down and destroy­ing the peo­ple he holds respon­si­ble for his par­ents death and fol­low­ing around Zarita, nei­ther of which cor­re­sponds with the intel­li­gent, curi­ous child whose story we we have been fol­lowed previously.

How­ever (and rather unusu­ally), I didn’t find my gen­eral indif­fer­ence towards the char­ac­ters affected how much I enjoyed this book. It was the his­tor­i­cal set­ting, the detail of the period, and the character’s indi­vid­ual jour­neys that held my inter­est rather than a desire to see these two pro­tag­o­nists together. Despite some flaws, Pris­oner of the Inqui­si­tion is, on the whole a well, a writ­ten novel and an inter­est­ing read. Bres­lin has writ­ten a strong story that admit­tedly fell down a lit­tle at the last hur­dle for me, but I think many younger read­ers will enjoy the roman­tic ele­ment towards the end of the book and for those who aren’t so keen on romance, but love a period book, this is still a great choice. I would cer­tainly be inter­ested in try­ing out some of Breslin’s other work in the future.