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http://nhw.livejournal.com/871029.html[return][return]I was disappointed by Lucarotti's novelisation of The Massacre, which stuck much more closely to his original script than the show as broadcast. Here again he has added bits and pieces which presumably were in his original concept, and I was again disappointed, but for a different reason: the narration is strangely flat, and you really miss the performances of the actors breathing life into Lucarotti's lines back in 1964. One cannot help but feel that the production team on the whole did Lucarotti a favour by editing his material. Also he has a really annoying habit of mixing indirect speech with direct speech, which reads like a desperate attempt to make a novel out of a TV script.

octavia_cade's review against another edition

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3.0

The really interesting thing about time travel, other than the tension that comes from a clash of cultures - is the ability of time travellers to change the culture in which they find themselves. Or, more to the point, their inability to change it, which is what this particular book/set of episodes explores. It in no way reaches the heights of the modern Rosa Parks episode, which is themed around that same inability, but it's still an entertaining story. Because really, who can fault Barbara's desires here? As a historian, she's keenly aware of both the horrors (and heights) of Aztec culture, and the destruction of that culture by the future arrival of the Europeans. One does not excuse the other, and if she can find a way to extirpate the idea of human sacrifice from the Aztecs, then maybe there will be something left of them to survive Cortés. I doubt it - he was clearly pretty damn bloodthirsty himself - but the slowly-dawning realisation that she can neither stop human sacrifice nor ameliorate the coming invasion is immensely sympathetic.

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