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A Gold Mine Of Adventures

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By KEVIN WALKER

The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 28, 2008

"The King's Gold," by Arturo Perez-Reverte (Putnam Adult, $24.95)

Everyone should at least try Perez-Reverte's Captain Alatriste series. I've recommended this series - this is the fourth installment - to everyone I know who enjoys books, in much the same way I might recommend Alexandre Dumas.

Why? Because if you like to read, you probably at one point read adventure books, and as quality adventure stories go, no one is doing it better right now than Perez-Reverte.

The Spanish writer knocks these books out when he's not writing more "serious" literature. (See his recent "The Painter of Battles," for example.) But this project has revealed him to be a worthy heir to Dumas and Rafael Sabatini.

Already enormously popular in his native Spain and throughout Europe, he does what the best adventure writers do, which is provide depth below the plot-driven excitement bubbling at the surface. That's where the real fun lies.

As with every book in the series, this one is narrated by Inigo Balboa, now in his mid-teens. After his experiences at war in the last book, "The Sun Over Breda," Balboa seems more mature. But the central force driving his life continues to be his obsession with Angelica de Alquezar, one of the Spanish queen's handmaidens and a young woman of dangerous beauty.

"She was so beautiful it was painful to look at her," Inigo writes at one point, during a clandestine meeting. She then makes things worse by confessing her (maybe) true feelings - which can be more scary for a young man than anything else, as Perez-Reverte captures during this passage:

"I believe I love you," she said suddenly.

"I sprang to my feet. Angelica was no longer smiling. She was watching me from her chair, gazing up at me with eyes as blue as the sky, as the sea, as life itself. I swear she was lovely enough to drive a man insane.

"Great God," I murmured."

But while Angelica is young Inigo's obsession - to the point where she, once again, almost gets him killed - his master and almost-constant companion is the captain, who is his usual taciturn self. Perez-Reverte again offers glimpses into the man behind the stolid mask, particularly in the remarkable passages at the end of the novel, during a climatic sword battle (there is almost always a climatic sword battle) and a meeting with royalty.

For one thing, the captain is getting older.

"The hand and the arm grow tired of killing too," Perez-Reverte writes in the middle of one fight scene. "Diego Alatriste would gladly have given what remained of his life - which was perhaps very little - to lay down his weapons and lie quietly in a corner, just for a while."

In years, he is only a little over 40. But he has seen a lot in those years. As Inigo explains: "He had grown old inside, as was the case with other men like him, who had been fighting for the true religion ever since they were boys, receiving nothing in exchange but scars, travails and misfortunes."

The novel begins where "The Sun Over Breda" ended. The year is 1626, and Alatriste and Inigo are returning to Spain after the war against the "heathens" in Flanders. Upon their arrival, they find themselves offered a new mission by Alatriste's old friend, the poet-swordsman Don Francisco de Quevedo. As usual, he provides poetry on the spot, including, at one point, a few lines about thieving:

"Life and stealing are the same

Thieving is no deadly vice

All that's worldly has a price

So take it, filch it, that's the game."

That's appropriate because the job Captain Alatriste is asked to perform involves gathering a group of cutthroats and thieves and former soldiers - sometimes all of the above - to help him steal gold that is being shipped back from the New World. It is the king himself who wants the theft committed, as the royal coffers are running a bit low, what with a war to pay for (sound familiar?). The action takes place primarily in Seville.

Like the other books, the tale is told in a fairly straightforward manner, and anyone expecting this fourth book to diverge in any great way from the first three is practicing wishful thinking. Still, Perez-Reverte provides, as usual, a tightly paced read. The only thing that might trip you up are the Spanish names and places (the book was translated from Spanish by Margaret Jull Costa).

Readers can expect a certain amount of realism (puddles of blood, for example). But you can also expect the sort of passages you won't find in most adventure books and a quick read that leaves you satisfied. But don't be surprised if you find yourself looking forward to the next one. Thankfully, Perez-Reverte plans nine in all.

If you go shopping, the first three are "Captain Alatriste," "Purity of Blood" and "The Sun Over Breda."

Kevin Walker is a reporter for The Tampa Tribune.

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