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Aztec Rage (Aztec)
Books: Travel: Barcelona: Item 5
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Aztec Rage (Aztec)by Gary Jennings, Junius Podrug, and Robert Gleason
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2 of 3 people found the following review helpful: A decent read but...., July 5, 2006 Reviewer:Lisa Jacker "Lisa" (Old Hickory, TN United States) - still not as good as the first one when Gary was alive. None of the newer books have been. Time for me to stop wishing and move on.
From Publishers Weekly
Gleason and Podrug continue the late Jennings's Aztec series with this fast-paced, absorbing fourth volume, featuring Spanish-born Don Juan de Zavala, who comes of age in colonial Mexico in 1808. Just as Don Juan expects to claim his inheritance, his dying uncle accuses him of illegitimate, half-Aztec origins, and Don Juan is then unjustly pegged as his uncle's murderer. Prudently hitting the road, Don Juan meets a charming, erudite rogue named Carlos, and together they head for Veracruz. When Carlos is murdered by a Mayan mob, Don Juan returns under Carlos's name to a Spain now erupting in revolt against Napoleon. He joins the resistance there before returning to Mexico. Back in the New World, where he's determined to take back his inheritance, he throws in his lot with rebels agitating to reclaim their independence from Spain. Don Juan has his consciousness raised about European racism towards the "indio" population (especially by curvaceous Aztec babe Marina), and the authors paint a vivid picture of the early stages of the bloody war of independence. Just as preoccupied with swashbuckling and womanizing as its predecessors, this latest Aztec novel is likely to be irresistible to fans of the series.
Copyright © Reed business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Jennings, this time with two coauthors, returns to the roily history of the Aztec empire and the colonization of New Spain in this latest entry in the best-selling cycle he began with Aztec (1982), followed by Aztec Autumn (1997) and Aztec Blood (2001). The focal character in this atmospheric yarn is swordsman Don Juan de Zavata; it is his swashbuckling adventures, and the threat of exposure of his true parentage, that lead him--and spellbound readers--from colonial Mexico, where the Aztec civilization lies in ruins, to the Spain of Catholic repression and Napoleonic ferment. What the novels in this series do so well, and this latest installment is a prime example, is to lend a resonant understanding of not only Aztec and colonial customs and even mind-sets but also how repressed peoples, whether by the act of conquest or the act of religious control, will indeed have their own day--how their resentment builds, in other words. A beautifully detailed novel for historical fiction fans. Brad Hooper
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved
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