Malabar Gold: Book Four: The Adventures of Baltasar Albueno

In the year 1507, an ounce of black peppercorn produced on the Malabar Coast of Western India was worth six times its purchase price when sold in Europe. The Portuguese, with superior ships and unprecedented violence, had diverted the flow of this “Malabar Gold” from its traditional route to a new, all-water route around the southern tip of Africa. The losers in this reversal of fortune, the Muslim Mamluks of Egypt, the Christians of Venice, and the Ottoman Turks, join forces and send a great armada to crush the upstart Iberians.

Baltasar Albueno, joins the allied armada as the Muslim traveler, Baltasar al-Andalusi—not to fight, but to spy for Venice and the Turks. Meanwhile, a young Ferdinand Magellan sails to India to join the Portuguese forces gathering to resist the allied onslaught. He will show himself to be a skillful leader of assault forces for the Portuguese. Baltasar, a man without a country, trys (with limited success) to avoid violence while serving his own private interests and those of his masters. Neither man will emerge unscathed, but the more worldly Baltasar clearly has the advantage in terms of commerce, intrigue, humor, and love.