Aztec Blood, Part I

Aztec Blood describes the world of swords and cloaks that is early 17th-century New Spain. This is a world that Miguel Cervantes y Savedra, creator of that ingenuous gentleman, Don Quixote, would have mocked for its pretense and elaborate code of chivalric behavior toward Spanish women. This behavior was not extended to women of other ethnicities who seemed to be universally regarded as putas. I found this novel interesting but did wonder as follows: In the novel, Christo writes a secret history in an invisible ink supplied by a pregnant prisoner, and a history for the viceroy's consumption that was not secret. We do not see the non-secret history. Extracts of the non-secret history might have made an interesting juxta position with the baudy secret history. All in all, an interesting read by the estate of the late Gary Jennings. I would have wished Jennings had been able to do for the Incas what he did for the Aztecs and could have also told the story of that intrepid traveler, Ibn Batuta.