Absolutely everything there is to know about the Aztecs is in that book. Jennings spent twelve years in Mexico researching that book, learning Spanish and Nahuatl along the way. It’s a beautiful tragedy, a slow-motion trainwreck that leaves you gasping for relief. When he can climb no higher, the Spaniards arrive and destroy everything he ever cared about. Every success is won upon the destruction of something he cherishes. He is a flawed man who is constantly seeking to better himself, often with heartbreaking results. The whole story does.Īztec is the life story of a young commoner in a small town with poor eyesight who defies his parents and follows his dreams to eventually become a wealthy merchant who travels the known world. At the same time, Aztec is not written from the perspective of Christian morality, and there is a lot of scandalously fun back and forth between the Mexicatl narrator and the Spaniards he is speaking to on that point. It was an eye-opening read for a thirteen-year-old, I can tell you. Aztec starts off with an incestuous pre-teen drug trip, and throughout the course of that book I learned more about what was possible between two or more consenting or non-consenting adults and/or children than I would have believed possible. When you consider that his books are all over a thousand pages long, that can get pretty kinky pretty quickly. I should preface the following observation with the disclaimer that I love Gary Jennings’ work and I will passionately advocate any adult read it, but the author has a peccadillo that really must be mentioned front and centre: If his characters go fifty pages without having sex, he gets bored. It was three or four years before I eventually read it to humour him, and I remember being stunned that my father had ever suggested I read this thing. At the time, I had no interest in New World civilizations. My father saw I was taking an interest in historical fiction, and he pulled a paperback of Aztec off the shelf and told me to read it.

My first exposure to Jennings was at the age of ten or eleven.

Gary Jennings has been mentioned on this blog several times in the last few days. While we wait, here’s my third selection for my 11-part series on my favourite authors of historical fiction. I imagine later today I’ll have some good news to announce. My e-book is still ‘Publishing’ according to Amazon.

Gary jennings aztec movie