One review site calls the novel ‘soft porn wrapped in swashbuckling garb’ – and they are right. He is a paradox on two legs – while loudly proclaiming himself to be a man of honor, he lies, cheats and manipulates his way to survive – although towards the end, he does show some shining examples of bravery and loyalty to friends. The ‘hero’, Zavala, is portrayed as a man of swords and horses, and while not uneducated, dislikes ‘scholars’ and ‘politics’. The plot as explained above sounds promising, like a classic gentleman’s novel full of bravado and pomp. Throwing his lot in with the rebels, Zavala now fights to free his homeland from the avaricious clutches of the local viceroy and the gachupines he once counted himself among. While on the run, he winds up sailing all the way to Spain itself, where he fights in the Napoleonic Wars against France, before eventually returning to Mexico – only to find that a revolution is brewing, led by Father Hidalgo. Initially, Zavala finds it difficult to rid himself of the prejudices against people he thinks of as the ‘lower’ class, but the people he encounters on his travels, along with his experiences, slowly changes his mind. In the Spanish new colony, ‘blood’ is everything: the gachupines control wealth and power over criollos (colonial Spaniards), and the criollos look down on peons (mestizos – half blooded Spaniards/Aztecs as well as the Aztecs themselves). Escaping with the help of a fellow prisoner, he winds up at a parish run by Father Miguel Hidalgo, who is secretly going against the church and Spanish government by teaching the local Aztecs how to cultivate wine and make pottery. Accused of murdering his uncle, Zavala is thrown into prison, where he learns to eat humble pie from the very people he has trod upon all his life. His life is thrown upside down when his dying uncle announces that Zavala is not pure-blooded but an Aztec changeling, taken in as a replacement after the Zavala family perished on the voyage from Spain to Mexico. Once a gachupine (pure-blooded Spanish nobleman), Don Juan Zavala’s passions in life consisted of women, horses, fighting, the spending of money and the mistreatment of those in the lower class. This particular book, Aztec Rage, is by Robert Gleason (Jennings’ former editor) and Junius Podrug. The rest were written by other authors with the ‘Gary Jennings’ title slapped on. The Aztec series was popularized by American author Gary Jennings, who died in 1999 after completing two books.
So before I lose the plot, so to speak, let’s do a review on Gary Jennings’ Aztec Rage.
The ironic thing is, I don’t have time to write about them, since I’ve been busy with housework and freelancing projects. Now that I’m freelancing, I finally have time to read books – and I’ve read a couple of them over the last few weeks.
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