So when I had the chance to pick up a first edition of Jennings, Aztec, to complement and supplement my paperback edition, I took it, of course..and the paperback soon went the way of The Journeyer and has not, as yet, returned, my family being even more scattered, these days..that younger son now living in Malaysia, starved of English-language reading material, but not having lost his hunger for a Good Read!!
And this IS a good read...lots and lots of it..762 pages in my First Edition, and every page as fresh and interesting as the first, Mr Jennings having quite a way with words!!
For Aztec is the story of the last and greatest native civilization of North America, at the very height of its magnificence, as seen through the eyes and told in the words of Mixtli-Dark Cloud,surely one of the more memorable characters of recent fiction. Born the son of a provincial quarrier, Mixtli raises himself far above his station, to become, first, a scribe, then to distinguish himself as a warrior, then to earn a fortune as a travelling merchant, exploring every part of what the Aztecs called CEM-ANAHUAC--The One World, the distant, rumoured lands of mountains, jungles, deserts, seacoasts. His courage and resourcefulness earn him a knighthood and, eventually, elevation to the nobility.
Mixtli's long and tumultuous life takes him-and us with him-on epic journeys, through lands and among peoples little known even at that time, sharing adventures hazardous, suspenseful, harrowing,and sometimes comic. His insatiable thirst for challenge and far horizons leads him to witness the barbaric gore and glory of the
Wars of Flowers, the feather-banner splendor of the Aztec capital of Tenochtitlan, the cruel nomadic life of the desert's Dog People, the proud culture of the Cloud People of the mountains, the wretched remnants of the once-mighty Maya in the jungles far to the south. With Mixtli we experience blooddrenched but awesomely grand sacrificial ceremonies....(and have a box of tissues handy for the one that affects HIM..so terribly, so horribly, that those of us who are parents MUST weep!).
At the pinnacle of Mixtli's career, and of the Aztecs' greatness, he receives his most significant commission...to be Motecuzoma's first emissary to the white strangers who have suddenly and disturbingly arrived on the eastern shores. Not knowing whether they are men or gods, little imagining what is in store for his people, Mixfli thus meets Cortes and his Conquistadors, come to destroy Aztec civilization, obliterate its society, and impose new gods and alien laws. Even then, in the rubble of The One World, himself abased and impoverished and grown old, Mixtli stands like some weathered colossus to defy the conquerors with one last act of heroic dignity.
AZTEC , we are told, was twelve years in the making, and the scholarly research shows. It is a compelling story, relevant with scholarly accuracy, set against an authentically created backdrop of accepted history. rich with memorable characters and a sense of common humanity...
I began a love affair with the author Gary Jennings back in the mid eighties, when I discovered the epic The Journeyer. I was still a secondary school librarian, then, and so persuasive was I about just how GREAT this book was that my own copy soon became tattered and dogeared, and then temporarily vanished, as first my students, my colleagues, and then my family determined to find out for themselves wha this book HAD, that could so enthuse this hard-to-please voracious reader.
My copy was finally located in the household of my younger, university-dormed son, having been around the world with two of his flatmates..and was in a sorry condition, indeed, so dilapidated that I set the Sunday Market bibliolocaters to find me a new copy...which, six months later, they triumphantly DID...and IT DOES NOT LEAVE MY HOUSE..NOT EVER!!
And now that I have been to America, and visited some of the settings Jennings has used, and read its long-awaited sequel, I feel a new kinship with this story, gruesome as it so often is, and starkly realistic in its depiction of the brutalities and inhumanities of earlier, less Politically-correct times.
So, vicariously, we encounter other bloodcurdling forms of violence; we suffer the shattering personal tragedies with which the gods have ordained that Mixtli must pay for the honors and riches that he earns; and we meet love and sexuality in numerous varieties, from the forbidden first love of his childhood to the ghastly proclivities of the female Bluebeard called Jadestone Doll to the great, enduring, and tragic love of his life.
Makes you glad to be born in the twentieth Century, though. for if an author's task is to hold up a mirror to a society,Jenning's glass burns the hand, indeed.. we are far, far better off looking into the kinder one in our bathroom, every blessed, uneventful morn!!
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