The King's Gold

Written by Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Narrated by Eddie Lopez

From the international bestselling author, the fourth adventure of Captain Alatriste, “the brooding charismatic hero of [Pérez-Reverte’s] wildly successful Spanish swashbuckling novels” (The New York Times)

With The King’s Gold, bestselling author Arturo Pérez-Reverte continues to enthrall readers and critics with his heroic seventeenth-century mercenary, Captain Alatriste.

The fourth adventure picks up in Seville in 1626. After serving with honor at the bloody siege of Breda, Alatriste and his protégé, Íñigo Balboa, accept a risky job
involving a dozen swordsmen and mercenaries at their command, a dazzling amount of contraband gold, and a heavily guarded Spanish galleon returning from
the West Indies. The job offer comes from the king himself, for at stake is nothing less than the Spanish Crown, and its dominion over the wealth of the Americas.
But for Alatriste, a very personal surprise awaits him on that galleon.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Recorded Books, Inc.
• Release date: Nov 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781980097020

Arturo Pérez-Reverte

Arturo Pérez-Reverte is the #1 internationally bestselling author of many critically acclaimed novels, including The Club Dumas, The Queen of the South, and The Siege, which won the International Dagger Award from the Crime Writers’ Association. A retired war journalist, he lives in Madrid and is a member of the Royal Spanish Academy. His books have been translated into more than forty languages and have been adapted to the big screen.

Reviews for The King's Gold

[chrisconway_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

The fourth Captain Alatriste adventure, which is essentially a pirate swashbuckler. I get the feeling Pérez Reverte is not trying so hard, he just banks on our considerable love of Iñigo and Alatriste.

[joycepa_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Fourth in the Captain Alatriste series, set in early 17th century Spain.Superficially, the series looks like a variation of the swashbuckling action-adventure reminiscent of the pirate scene. Captain Alatriste, the protagonist, is anything but. He is a professional swordsman,an, sometimes soldier of the king of Spain, often a hired sword for whatever dirty work requires violence. He is also a devoté of the theater and friend of poets. An introspective man, he says little but stands fiercely by his friends--and his honor. The stories are narrated by Íñigo Balboa, the young son of a soldier friend killed in one of Spain’s endless wars.At the time of this installment, 1625, Spain “owns half the world and is at war with the other half.” Because of the ferocity of Spain’s soldiers, “the name of Spaniard made the earth tremble.” But in reality, Spain’s empire, which straddles both the Old and the New Worlds, is in decline. Only the gold from the New World keeps the soldiers paid, the wars going. And corruption, the reluctance of the Spanish to work (everyone wants to be a nobleman), and the lavishness of the court of Philip IV, means that Spain is being drained.Alatriste and Balboa have returned to Seville after the Battle of Breda in Flanders. Alatriste is approached by an old friend, a confidante of the king, to intercept the theft of one of the treasure ships that is about to make landfall at Seville. It’s a tricky business that will involve nasty fighting with not a great promise of success.That’s the plot. But what is really the story is that of Spain and its culture--and especially the lives of the soldiers who upheld the empire. Since Íñigo is now 15 and a true veteran of war, he is starting to grow up, and beginning to understand just what Spain is about. He’s writing as an old man, looking back on his life--but the viewpoint is still that of a young man (they grew up fast in those days), learning about the life he has chosen and the culture to which he belongs.I find the series fascinating because Perez-Reverte finds the era fascinating and is able to communicate the richness of the times and place. This is one of the shorter and in a way, more straight-forward installments in the series, but absorbing and entertaining. Highly recommended.

[dougwood57 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

King’s Gold by Arturo Perez-ReverteThe fourth book in the Captain Alatriste series finds the Captain and a rapidly maturing Inigo back from the war in Flanders. Their swords are soon called into action to defend a shipment of the Spanish Empire’s lifeblood – gold arrived from the Americas. The brief book features, yes, swashbuckling action, a group of nasty characters recruited for the purpose by Alatriste, and Inigo’s continuing love obsession with Angelica Alquezar, a young lady in the Queen’s court, and well above the boy’s pay grade. Gualterio Malatesta reprises his role as their arch nemesis. The well-known poet Francisco de Quevedo plays another prominent role. Perez-Reverte delivers the trademark historical authenticity and a decent tale of intrigue and clashing steel. The hidalgos’ obsession with finely-honed sense of honor makes any unguarded word or deed a potential matter of life and death. Two more books in the series have already been published and another three are planned. Whether the story can carry 5 more books is an open question. Fans of Alatriste will enjoy The King’s Gold, but anyone unfamiliar with the story so far will probably be lost. Newcomers should start with the first book, Captain Alatriste.

[chazzw_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Back at TIFF ‘06 one of the Gala events was the screening of AlatrIste with Viggo Mortensen in attendance. So it’s a bit of a coincidence that I’ve just finished reading Arturo Perez-Reverte’s latest, The King’s Gold. I’m headed off to Toronto on Friday for this years edition of the Toronto International Film Festival and there’s a scene in The King’s Gold that’s right out of the film. Now, the movie was based on an earlier Perez-Reverte novel which I have not read, 1996’s El capitán Alatriste. In the movie, there is a scene in which Alatriste’s young ‘ward’, Íñigo Balboa, is lured into a trap set by his would be sweetheart, the treacherous Angélica de Alquézar. Surely over-matched by the villainous Gualterio Malatesta and facing certain death, he is rescued by Perez-Reverte’s Three musketeers: Alatriste, Sebastián Copons, and Francisco de Quevedo. Now this same scene possibly was in the earlier novel. I don’t know. Or, it could have been a sketch worked into the movie, later to appear in this new novel.The King’s Gold is genre fiction that adheres to many of the conventions. The masterful and somewhat mysterious hero is paired with a young acolyte. There is of course the long time and serious nemesis that eludes sure death (to reappear in later ‘episodes’). Here, Perez-Reverte also makes use of a stand-by favorite plotdevice of thrillers of every stripe: Our hero must put together a team of outcasts and misfits for a dangerous and perhaps terminal mission. Here, tasked with foiling a plot that siphons money from the King’s coffers that flow from the New World, Alatriste needs to recruit a small contingent for his mission. He finds himself in Seville for that purpose. The setting allows Perez-Reverte to sum up his rather pessimistic view of mankind: And Seville was the ideal place to provide the kind of men we required. If you bear in mind that man’s first father was a thief, his first mother a liar, and their first son a murderer - for there’s nothing new under the sun - this was all confirmed in that rich and turbulent city where the Ten Commandments weren’t so much broken as hacked to pieces with a knife. (pg 133]Perez-Reverte’s prose style is perfectly in tune with his fast-paced, speeding bullet of a story. Sometimes he obviously dips into cliche, as In describing the Patio de los Naranjos, which he describes as “a place where fugitives from justice and the whole criminal world were as thick as thieves and as snug as bugs in a rug.” Cliches such as these might be considered sloppy translation, but they do seem to fit in with Perez-Reverte’s easy flowing swashbuckling style. They hardy raise an eyebrow.Perez-Reverte continues his relentless assault on Spanish history and the black spot he finds in the soul of man. Yet, he never fails to entertain and provide a truly diverting story. Great fun.