Customer Reviews

Montezuma's Daughter (Wildside Fantasy)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is a remarkable story in the classic mould of H Rider Haggard's best works which can be enjoyed at many levels. As a straight adventure yarn it carries the reader on a historical roller-coaster ride through 16th Century England, Spain, and Mexico at the time of the Spanish Conquest. Rider Haggard wrote Montezuma's Daughter immediately after the death of his beloved son, Jack. It was a blow from which he never recovered and the deep grief and depression he suffered colours this tale of ancient mexico with a dark despair which is not inappropriate to an account of the last days of the Aztec Empire. But this does not make Montezuma's Daughter a gloomy book. Far from it. Rider Haggard was a deeply (if unconventional) religious man and his hopes and aspirations for mankind shine through the darkness to illumine the pages of this book with his wonderful spiritual philosophy which is perhaps his greatest legacy to his readers. The closing chapters on the fall of the Aztec capital of Tenoctitlan under the relentless assault of Cortez are profoundly moving. In short, Montezuma's Daughter is a most moving and well-written fictional history of the fall of Mexico interwoven with a passionate love story and enough action to keep the most jaded reader on the edge of their seat, whilst those who value the deeper aspects of Rider Haggard's narratives as much as the story-telling will not be disappointed.

Within the first hundred pages, the hero has gone to Spain to avenge his mother's murder, learned how to be a doctor, helped drug a girl about to be walled in a convent cellar, held prisoner on a slave ship, thrown overboard, and is shipwrecked in Aztec Mexico. It gets better from there. And yet the hero is such a nice man: a novelty these days in adventure stories.

An adventure worthy of Dumas' inkwell. A wonderfully crafted story that should strike a cord with any adventure reader, especially one from 10 to 14. Good coverage of historical facts and environment of the time arranged around a timeless story of love and adventure. Give this book to your kids and they will forever be grateful.

Montezuma's Daughter is a story about love, adventure, war, hate, history and etc. I read this book when I was about 11 years old and I thought it was so amazing that I really would like to reread it again. The author also discribes the characters so clearly that you get an exact picture of who is it that you're reading about. I would recomend this book for everyone because it also has lots of historical facts to it too.

One of the best books I've ever read: love, travel, Spanish inquisition, war.

It is a genuine pleasure to read a book by H. Rider Haggard. Apart from the high adventure elements, romance, attention to historical details, larger than life characters, the delivery is in a stylish English, written by a master of the art.

The book is written in the first person, in 'olde' Elizabethan English and one reviewer gives a poor rating because of it. I found that, whilst it takes a while to accustom oneself to the style, the story actually rings more true because of it.

Enough of the story is reviewed here for me to not give more plot away, suffice to say I add my approval rating. No-one should be bored reading this tale of love, war, violence and vengeance.

I loved it!

I have had a lifelong passion for all things Pre-Columbian having traveled through Mexico, Guatemala, Belize and Peru extensively and read voraciously about those cultures. I was excited to find out about this book. And so disappointed after reading it. There was little if any character development - I didn't really care about anybody in the story. The stilted manner in which the dialog was written was silly - were we supposed to believe that this is the way they spoke? And I can't even count the times the author mentioned something in the story and then wrote "but I am not going to go into that here". How annoying was that? I could say that I couldn't put this down - but in truth I stuck it out to the end hoping that it would get good. It never did.

Better to read Gary Jennings "Aztec" if you want to get the feeling of what life was life in that place and time.

Written between June 5th and September 3rd, 1891, H. Rider Haggard's 16th novel out of an eventual 58, "Montezuma's Daughter," was ultimately published in October 1893. The previous winter, Haggard and his wife Louisa had been in Mexico hunting for treasure, and on February 8th, the author had learned of the death of his 9-year-old son "Jock" back in England. The grieving father wrote "Montezuma's Daughter" as what his biographer D.S. Higgins calls a "therapeutic act," and, following and preceding two of the author's greatest works--1892's "Nada the Lily" and 1894's "The People of the Mist"--demonstrates that the author, despite his bereavement, was then at the very top of his game.

The novel takes the form of a memoir written by a half Englishman (his mother was Spanish) named Thomas Wingfield. Sitting down to write in 1588, immediately following the defeat of the Spanish Armada (an event that apparently elates Thomas...and for good reason, as it turns out!) and by request of his Queen Elizabeth, the old man relates to us the story of how he took vengeance on the Spanish cavalier Juan de Garcia. Seventy years earlier, Garcia had murdered his own cousin, Wingfield's mother, and the trail of vengeance that young Thomas follows brings him to some very strange places, indeed. (WARNING: Spoilers ahead!) Thomas trails the villain to Seville, where he becomes a quack doctor's apprentice and witnesses the horrors of the Inquisition; follows him to the New World, en route suffering a shipwreck (a shipwreck would also figure prominently in such Haggard novels as 1888's "Mr. Meeson's Will," 1905's "Benita" and 1929's "Mary of Marion Isle") and a period of slavery aboard a Spanish caraque; and finally fetches up on the shores of what is now Tobasco, Mexico. All that, in just the novel's first 1/3! Once in ancient Mexico, Thomas is captured by the Aztecs, becomes a living god, marries Otomie (the titular character)--despite the fact that he is engaged to an Englishwoman back home--and, like some 16th century Forrest Gump, witnesses the arrival of Cortes and the many battles resulting in the downfall of Tenoctitlan (now called Mexico City) and the Aztec empire. (During all this time, Thomas encounters Garcia on numerous occasions, with the villain always seeming to gain the upper hand somehow.) It is just remarkable how much action and adventure Haggard manages to cram into this work of historical fiction--the book is replete with at least three marvelously described battle sequences, pyramid sacrifices, sieges, scenes of torture, high romance, political intrigue, sword fights, cliffhangers and on and on--and for those readers not familiar with the details of this bit of history, a reading of this novel will certainly prove a fun and entertaining way to learn.

Thomas Wingfield was a character obviously very close to Haggard's own heart. Like the author, he resided in Ditchingham in Norfolk, and suffered the loss of his son; to be accurate, somewhat sadistically, the author has Wingfield lose no less than five children during the course of this novel! Also like the author, Thomas marries a woman even though his heart still belongs to a woman named Lily (in Haggard's case, Lilly Jackson, the love of his youth). Wingfield is a wonderful character, headstrong and brave; a deeply moral man, who obviously feels great guilt about marrying an Indian woman when previously betrothed. Otomie, too, is a well-drawn creation, a noble, fearless and loving wife, though still more than half savage, as events prove. De Garcia, it must be said, is one of the best, most sadistic villains that Haggard ever created, and must immediately be placed in the pantheon of the author's great lovesick wretches that includes Frank Muller in "Jess" (1887), Owen Davies in "Beatrice" (1890), Samuel Rock in "Joan Haste" (1895), Swart Piet in "Swallow" (1899), Ishmael in "The Ghost Kings" (1908) and Hernando Pereira in the Allan Quatermain adventure "Marie" (1912). Though the vengeance that Thomas takes on de Garcia is long delayed (20 years!), it is well worth the wait, taking place against the backdrop of the Xaca volcano. And speaking of pantheons, the real-life character of Marina, the native woman who betrayed her people and aided Cortes, must be placed in the pantheon of exotic Haggardian women who dare much for love and sacrifice more, a pantheon that includes Maiwa in "Maiwa's Revenge" (1888), Noie in "The Ghost Kings," Mameena in "Child of Storm" (1913) and, of course, Ayeesha, from the author's seminal "She" (1887) and its three sequels.

"Montezuma's Daughter," in short, is a rip-roaring, sweeping historical adventure with few if any fantasy elements. Haggard, the so-called "Father of the Lost Race Novel," needed none of those elements here; his wonderfully described Aztec world is quite fantastic enough, and the various portents and demonic possessions that take place supposedly have a documented basis. It is a tale, as Lily puts it, "wondrous strange, more like those that happen in romances than in this plain world," but thank goodness that we had an H. Rider Haggard to give us those wonderful romances! This book, if adapted faithfully, would cost a good $300 million to bring to the screen today, and even then probably wouldn't be half as perfect. This is the kind of novel that one closes after many a thrill-packed night, maybe with a tear in the eye, and says, "My God, what a book!" This was the 40th novel of Haggard's that I have read, and I'm delighted to report that it is one of his very best.

A quite touching love story set in ancient Mexico.. makes good reading..