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A review by nwhyte
Aztec Century by Christopher Evans
4.0
https://nwhyte.livejournal.com/3067380.html
This is a really interesting alternate history where the Aztecs benefited from Spanish technology and cultural inputs to become the major superpower on the planet. The narrator is a princess of the British royal household towards the end of the twentieth century, just after the successful Aztec invasion of England, making her own accommodation with the new order, from a starting point of uncompromising intransigent resistance. A novel like this has to achieve the difficult tasks of intriguing the reader about the different historical track without info-dumping, while also having a decent plot that works on a human level. I think Evans succeeds very well at both - hints are dropped but never fully fleshed out about his world’s history, and the protagonist’s journey of betrayal and unreliable information at her own personal level is a nice reflection of the alternate history genre as a whole. There is a bonus insight into how our own world would look from the Aztec Century starting point. I really enjoyed this and am surprised that it is not better known.
This is a really interesting alternate history where the Aztecs benefited from Spanish technology and cultural inputs to become the major superpower on the planet. The narrator is a princess of the British royal household towards the end of the twentieth century, just after the successful Aztec invasion of England, making her own accommodation with the new order, from a starting point of uncompromising intransigent resistance. A novel like this has to achieve the difficult tasks of intriguing the reader about the different historical track without info-dumping, while also having a decent plot that works on a human level. I think Evans succeeds very well at both - hints are dropped but never fully fleshed out about his world’s history, and the protagonist’s journey of betrayal and unreliable information at her own personal level is a nice reflection of the alternate history genre as a whole. There is a bonus insight into how our own world would look from the Aztec Century starting point. I really enjoyed this and am surprised that it is not better known.