The King's Fifth

Only 20 % in taxes? Tax haven!

Now to something completely different' You know I'm a big fan of the TV-series The Mysterious Cities of Gold? Well, since I have to wait a couple of years (hopefully) for the next season of the show, I decided to read the book The King's Fifth by Scott O'Dell that was an inspiration for the series. The story is that the cartographer Esteban is on trail for murder and withholding the king of Spains part of the treasure he found on his journey in the new lands of America. So you have the parts at present while he is in prison and the courtroom and the other the retelling from the start at sea and then how he is persuaded by Captain Mendoza to join him in the search for gold and how he ended up the only one who knows where the treasure is.

Like the show, it ties in to actual historical events. For example they meet up with Coronando who had an expedition to look for Eldorado (he is also famous from Indianan Jones and the Last Crusade with the cross of Coronando that starts the film). But really fast you realise that there ain't no flying golden condor machines or ancient civilisations destroyed in thermonuclear wars and such. No, this is fairly grounded in reality. There is certain parts that is certainly lifted from here. Several names, like Zia, Mendoza, Esteban and Gomez. Certain events like the the storm at sea and the golden lake. Certain characters could be seen as inspirations, for example Roa is described as a bit bigger and fits in with Sancho and I wonder if father Fransisco inspired parts of father Rodriguez. They also mentions Marinche even though she doesn't appear in the book proper. Zia even have an animal sidekick although a lizard instead of a bird.

It's a rather short book and it's interesting how it follows Estebans journey and he goes from just a kid wanting to make a map of the unknown until the gold fever grips him as well and how it pushes Zia and father Fransisco away from him that acts like moral anchors in the story, until the end when he does the only right thing and throws away the ill-gotten treasure since it poisons the mind of the spaniards. And even though he tells the spaniards that the gold lies in a place that no man can reach them, the gold fever have them in its claws. Well worth the read.