Aztec
by Gary Jennings

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Book Reviews of Aztec

Book Review: My favorite novel
Summary: 5 Stars

I know that Jennings played fast and loose w/ some of his cultural characterizations and details, but he sells it as fiction, not fact. It really is exhaustively researched, however -- many of the characters in the novel are mentioned in Meso-American records and lore. Jennings liked to use fact as a jumping off point -- he would figure out everything that we know about a historical people/era, and w/in the loose boundries dictated by fact, flesh it out.

Aztec really was his opus, the definitive Jennings. His other novels are worth reading, but after you've read one you'll recognize similar themes and characters popping up each time... (E.g. complex but sympathetic protagonist, sagacious practical mentor, pretty young boy, hypocritical and opportunist religious zealot etc...)

Jennings will [tick]-off everybody. Advocates of political correctness will dislike the tolerant but definitely condescending attitude of his protagonists towards his gay characters, and fact that the gay characters are always at least a little flawed and almost always suffer a horrifying fate.

In his more Eurocentric books, many of his non-white characters are presented as ignorant or conniving or both. His black characters in particular are generally flawed in some major way (for example, the one black character in in Aztec is coincidently the guy who unwittingly brought smallpox to the new world...)

His females tend to be semi-dull saints... or if clever, incredibly evil. The reader is definitely getting a "male" perspective through Jennings first-person narrator.

In a way that could offend the sensibilities of both the left and the right, his books are all ridiculously violent and often sexually violent. Certainly any sexual taboo is described in detail somewhere in his novels. I have a feeling that he has a small following amongst NAMBLA advocates, although I don't believe that Jennings was writing for this crowd. W/out exception though his books feature attractive young boys who are sexualized to some degree.

Conservative readers may take offense at his dipiction of Christianity as a opiate-like tool for opportunistic men. Christianity is a favorite target of Jennings, yet his books all have a thread of mysticism to them, as if God exists in spite of Christianity.

On a related note, Moslems in particular are also typified as uneducated, backwards and self-serving (not in Aztec though, which had no Moslem characters.)

Of course any historian who reads his books will have to take issue w/ the characterization of the inhabitants of the past as essentially 20th Century people. The protagonist is often successful specifically because he thinks like a modern Western person instead of a person of his era and culture. And Jennings core style of filling in the blanks of history is going to offend the Occam's Razor scientist-minded.

All of this is irrelevant in my mind. The books should be read by adults who understand that it is FICTION reality and are capable of drawing their own conclusions. If Jennings conventions offend, stop reading. If you find some of the more twisted (specifically non-consentual sex, non-adult sex or violent) concepts titilating, you are a sick [person]. Seek help. If Jennings was prejudiced against gays, non-whites, women or Christians, that was his opinion and he had a right to say it, even though I personally don't agree.

Jennings could've argued that the predudice is simply an extension of his protagonists attitudes, since most of his novels are written in the first person, and even though his protagonists are sympathetic they are products of their era and culture. (This is a valid argument, except that Spangle is written in the third person and is probably the most offensive to the Politically Correct.)

Anyway, you've been warned. Read the book if you can accept the above criticisms and you're in the mood for a big meaty tall tale. As a novel it is brilliant, only bogging down twice, at points where Jennings resolves lots of loose ends and doesn't quite leave enough hanging to keep you going. Muddle through those spots and you're in for a rewarding yarn.

Summary of Aztec

Historical Books

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