Aztec [Kindle Edition]

Colin Falconer (Author)

Book Description

The daughter if a prophet and the child slave of Spanish adventurer Hernan Cortes, the life of the Aztec princess Malinali is one of the most enduring legends of Mexico. Her role in history divides opinion even today. Reviled by some as a traitor responsible for the destruction of the Indians, worshiped by others as a heroine and symbolic mother of the nation, hers is the most extraordinary story in the history of the Americas.

The legendary Aztec civilization is here brought to life in blazing colour, as the author traces the story of the enigmatic Malinali who held for a moment the future of an entire country in her hands. Contradictory, sensuous and fiercely intelligent, Malinali became the key to Cortes conquest of Mexico. It is a story of impossible odds, unimaginable cruelty, extraordinary courage and craven betrayal. Who were the heroes and who the villains?

Today the Aztecs are a distant memory. But Malinali's name lives on. This book spent four months on the best seller lists in Mexico, re-igniting debate yet again about the true heritage of a people and the very nature of western colonisation of the natural world.

Product Details

• File Size: 764 KB
• Print Length: 394 pages
• Simultaneous Device Usage: Unlimited
• Publisher: Who Dares Wins Publishing (February 6, 2012)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0076NJ9JM
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray: Not Enabled
• Lending: Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #143,027 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

20 of 20 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping novel of historical Mexico January 10, 2012

By Great Historicals

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In the novel AZTEC, Spanish conquistador, Hernán Cortés, leads an expedition into Mexico to bring it under the rule of the King of Castile during the early 1500's. He encounters a young, courageous slave woman named Malinali who was an once an Aztec princess sold into slavery to the Mayans when she was a child. Malinali becomes an interpreter and guide and consort to Cortés on his journey to speak to the greatest leader of Mexico.

This book is a remarkable novel, not only for its fascinating historical details, but because author Colin Falconer holds nothing back in recounting the pagan brutality and horrendous cruelties of this exotic land and time. He brings the legendary character of Malinali to life. She stands out as a paragon, a woman of virtue and enigmatic strength who will definitely appeal to feminine readers. Although there is a romantic element between Malinali and Cortés, it does not overpower the story. Rather, it acts as a comfort, soothing the reader's mood after some of the more shocking, brutal scenes.

A fast-paced read, Aztec fascinated me from start to finish. As with all of Colin Falconer's novels, his characters have depth and credibility, moving the story forward through their often unpredictable actions. His work takes the reader through a never-ending labyrinth of twists and turns that grips and entertains. Get this book. It is a magnificent piece of work!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Excellent Reading June 17, 2012

By William S Hart

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This is an excellent read. The author accurately depicts historical events while cleverly developing the personality of the characters. I will certainly be reading more from this author!!!!

3.0 out of 5 stars wordy June 9, 2013

By Sandra Morgan

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This is a fictional accounting of the arrival of Conquistadors upon Mexican soil. How the European's treated the native people and exploited them for their own personal gain.

4.0 out of 5 stars Interesting May 10, 2013

By Peggy Allen

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It's not a book I would normally read, but it was good reading about how things might have happened back in the Aztec history.

5.0 out of 5 stars Living History May 9, 2013

By Ana Mardoll TOP 500 REVIEWER

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Feathered Serpent / 0-609-61029-5

Falconer shows his genius again with this fantastic novel. The characters of Cortes, Malinali, and Motecuhzoma are brought to vivid life on the page. In careful steps, Falconer outlines how a handful of men can wreak havoc on a powerful empire - provided that they are aided by a powerful mythology, by united allies driven by a long-standing enmity, and by a detrimental caution on the part of the empire.

While I am not a student on the period in question, Falconer appears to hit the topic of historical accuracy as closely as one can expect with a historical novel. Cortes is shown to be a very clever tactician, but burdened with an unbending conviction of his own rightness at all times. Malinali is proud of her birthright and impressive talents as interpreter, but she has learned that women and slaves have little power in her world, and she uses her power carefully and cautiously. Motecuhzoma walks a fascinating tightrope between a shrewd emperor and a superstitious man, plagued by the many doomsday prophecies that his unhappy subjects issue on his head.

"Feathered Serpent" really shines with careful use of secondary characters to highlight the many aspects of the conflict. One Spaniard prefers the lifestyle of the American Indians, and he provides a useful narrative counterpoint by explaining that the American Indian custom of sacrificing humans is not fundamentally different in his view from the Spanish custom of burning witches, heretics, and Jews. Another Spaniard grapples with his initial distaste for the American Indians as it is rapidly counterbalanced with his growing distaste for his fellow Spaniards.... The native woman Rain Flower acts as a foil to the determined Malinali as she struggles to gauge between her duty to her Spanish "husband" against her desire for her Spanish lover.

Powerful and tasteful, "Feathered Serpent" carefully treads the historical and the personal by giving private details of the lives and thoughts of these compelling people without sliding into vulgarity. This book is a fantastic introduction to this period in American history and is a compelling read - I couldn't put it down until I finished it entirely.

~ Ana Mardoll Read more ›

4.0 out of 5 stars A story of treachery, brutality, cruelty and courage. May 6, 2013

By Bob Jarvis

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The story of Cortez' conquest of Mexico just astounding. How he conquered a nations of millions, themselves a marshal people who ruled the Aztec nation through a mixture of warfare and ritual cruelty. No one can guess how many hundreds of thousands were sacrificed to the Aztec Gods, but it was common practice in the inter tribal wars to attempt to capture as many warriors as possible to feed the temple priests in their dire work. When war captives were not available, choices were apparently made from within the ordinary population.
Enter Cortez from the Spanish colony of Cuba. With a pitiful couple of hundred soldiers, some mounted, others pike men on foot. Taking advantage of the Aztecs' barbarous treatment of the non-Mexica population he is able to form a number of alliances with these less successful tribes and proceeds to colonise Mexico with their support.
I enjoyed the writing and the delivery, that alternates a historical action account with first person reflections from the treacherous Malinche. Whilst it is based on the true history of the conquest the narrative is obviously pure fiction, but believable. However, this is a story of warfare, with such a long litany of cruelty, barbarism, torture, and deceit that I just became weary of this constant, depressing action. I suppose though, it is the nature of this particular beast.
I would read more from this author.

2.0 out of 5 stars Became boring February 15, 2013

By LKD

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I was interested at first - the history of Cortes' path through the Aztec lands was intriguing at first, but I didn't like ANY of the characters in this novel, and found it repetitious. I gave up about halfway through.

More About the Author

"I was 18 years old, I'd just left school and got a job in London, working in an insurance company. I was working inside - in an office! My mother thought that was like being CEO of Shell Oil.

"I was late one morning, I took a short cut through the church yard to the station to catch my train. I'd just finished reading The Sun Also Rises the night before; and here I was looking at all these gravestones, I remember thinking: Gee, we're not here very long. Better make it count.

"So I went home, told my mother I was quitting my job and going to Morocco. She damned near fainted."

After travelling through Spain and Africa, Colin hitch-hiked across Europe to Sweden to visit a girlfriend he'd met the year before on a football tour. When he finally got back home, he was still restless. After failing to make the grade as a professional football player, he travelled around Asia; his experiences in Bangkok and India later inspired his thriller VENOM, and his adventures in the jungles of the Golden Triangle of Burma and Laos were also filed away for later, the basis of his OPIUM series about the underworld drug trade.

He emigrated to Australia where he helped a mate establish a new advertising agency. "We could only afford this derelict building for an office. Once we were pitching to a client during a thunderstorm and the roof flooded. A piece of the ceiling fell down and just missed his head. Fortunately he had a sense of humour. We got the account!

"After a couple of years we were doing much better. We could even afford to pay ourselves a wage! But I really wanted to be a writer, not a copywriter. When I told my mate I was leaving to try my luck in the Big Smoke, he offered me 40% of the business. It was 40% of nothing at the time. I saw him a couple of years ago, and he'd just sold the agency for twenty million dollars. I worked out what 40% of that was on a pocket calculator. It's quite a lot of money, apparently."

Colin went to Sydney and worked in TV and radio and freelanced for many of Australia's leading newspapers and magazines. But he got his dream, publishing over a dozen novels in the UK and US and having his work sold into translation in Brazil, Belgium, the Czech republic, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Serbia, Slovakia, Spain and Turkey.

He lived for many years in the beautiful Margaret River region in WA, and helped raise two beautiful daughters with his late wife, Helen. While writing, he also worked in the volunteer ambulance service. "I'd be at my desk typing, then thirty minutes later I might be crawling into an overturned car or running along a beach with the oxygen for a near drowning. It was an interesting time."

His marriage ended in tragic circumstances, a story he has told in 'The Naked Husband,' and its non-fiction sequel, 'The Year We Seized the Day,' written with a writing partner, Elizabeth Best.

He travels regularly to research his novels and his quest for authenticity has led him to run with the bulls in Pamplona, pursue tornadoes across Oklahoma and black witches across Mexico, go cage shark diving in South Africa and get tear gassed in a riot in La Paz. (He was actually trying to cycle down the Death Road. In the end he had to abandon the attempt and take the bus down.) He also completed a nine hundred kilometre walk of the camino in Spain.

A few years ago he stopped writing. 'I suddenly found I couldn't do it anymore. It was after'The Year We Seized the Day.' I was ridden with guilt and I remember standing on a beach in Thailand late one night, and I said to God: 'Okay I've had enough now.'

A week later I was in a Thai hospital, only time in my whole life I've ever been sick, I'd got some sort of tropical infection and I was close to multiple organ failure. I remember praying again (that's twice in one year!): "Hey I didn't know you were listening, Big Guy! I didn't mean it! I have two girls to look out for!"

"I survived but when I got home I started drinking too much and I couldn't find my writing mojo. It got ugly there for a while. Thought I'd never write again."

Then he published SILK ROAD, and got a three book contract in London, and his love affair for life and for writing returned. "For me, the two things are inseparable. My passion for one infects the other."

His fiction comes from dedicated research and what he calls a quest for Hemingway's ghost; characters with a passion for life, for love and the courage to face down their demons.

Istanbul, Bucharest, Colin Falconer'When I was walking through that graveyard I made two promises to my gawky 18 year old self; one - that I would not die feeling that I had not lived, and two - that I would follow my siren call to write, no matter where it lead. I feel like so far I have kept that promise and I intend to see it all the way through.'

You can now find Colin's books on Kindle where his entire list will be available by the end of the year; SILK ROAD was published in hardback and paperback by Corvus-Atlantic in London in 2011 and his new novel STIGMATA has just been released.