The King of the Sea

The book is structured in two parts.
The first part recounts the adventure of Yanes, who sets out to rescue Tremal-Naik and his daughter Darma.
The setting is Borneo, rich in strange fauna and an exotic atmosphere.
Plot twists follow one after another, yet a certain artificiality and repetitiveness emerge, rendering the reading tedious.
This section of the book closes with yet another surprise: the terrible leader of the Thugs had a son, who now seeks to avenge his father’s death and has allied himself with the British to defeat Sandokan.
The island of Mompracem has been conquered, and the pirates of Malaysia decide to declare war on England.
In the second part, the true protagonist emerges: the cruiser Re del Mare, aboard which the Tigers roam, fight, and conquer.
Seascapes return—a tempestuous sea and rugged, inaccessible coastlines.
And an impossible love story unfolds, between Darma and the son of the terrible Thug.
The narrative becomes more intricate, as combat episodes alternate with conversational interludes, gradually forging a kind of friendship between the son of the Terrible Thug and the pirate chieftains.
As in The Black Corsair, one would expect an unhappy ending; indeed, here matters reach the point where Sandokan and Yanes could well be defeated, killed, or taken prisoner.
Sandokan, in particular, is weary; he is no longer the man he once was, far less marmoreal than he appeared in the other novels.
Yet in the end comes the plot twist: love triumphs, and out of love, the son of the terrible Thug realizes that vengeance is pointless, not least because by pursuing it he would lose his beloved.
The pirate chieftains are freed.
Unlike the other books in the Malaysian cycle, here one faces a flagging narrative momentum (so much so that the author leans heavily on his well-worn techniques without any innovation), and even the depiction of the setting (the sea and the jungle) seems marginal to the tale.
What does emerge, however, is a theme absent from the other novels: technology, embodied in the cruiser's sheer power and the introduction of an inventor capable of triggering remote explosions.
Technology renders Sandokan and Yanes obsolete: their life cycle has ended because the world has changed; it is no coincidence that they are defeated by four cruisers, likewise powerful and swift.
Yet technology has its frailties: the Re del Mare sails under the constant dread of finding no coal to feed its boilers, and the inventor perishes, struck down by a mere shell.
The age of sail fades away, but the new technologies grant the "heroes" far less autonomy and independence.