Feathered Serpent: A Novel of the Mexican Conquest

Feathered Serpent / 0-609-61029-5 Falconer shows his genius again with this fantastic novel. He brings to vivid life the characters of Cortes, Malinali, and Motecuhzoma. In careful steps, he outlines how a handful of men can wreak havoc on an empire - provided that the handful is aided by a powerful mythology, allies united in long-standing hatred of the empire, and excessive caution on the part of the stronger party. While I am not a careful student on the period in question, Falconer appears to hit the topic of historical accuracy very closely - or as closely as one can expect with a novel. Cortes is shown to be a very clever tactician, but burdened with an unbending conviction of his own rightness in all things. Malinali is proud of her birthright and talents as interpreter, but she has learned that women and slaves have little power in her world and she uses her power carefully and cautiously. Motecuhzoma, perhaps most interesting of all, walks a careful tightrope between a shrewd emperor and a superstitious man, plagued by the many doomsday prophecies that his unhappy subjects issue on his head. Careful use is made of secondary characters to highlight both sides of the conflict. Norte, a Spaniard who prefers the lifestyle of the American Indians, provides a useful narrative counterpoint - explaining to a priest that the American Indian custom of sacrificing humans is not, in his view, different from the Spanish custom of burning witches, heretics, and Jews. Benitez, a Spanish commander, struggles with his initial distaste for the American Indians, coupled with his growing distaste for his fellow Spaniards. And, Rain Flower, a native women given as a concubine to Benitez, must struggle with her attraction to the more-familiar Norte and her perceived duty to her kind but unfamiliar 'husband'. Powerful and tasteful, Feathered Serpent carefully treads the historical and the personal, giving private details of the lives and thoughts of these compelling people, but refusing to slide into vulgarity or prurience merely to gain readers. This book is a fantastic introduction to this period in American history and is a compelling read - I couldn't put it down until I finished it entirely.

When reading historical novels based on actual persons, you always wonder how cdlose the authors interpretation of character comes to what the reality was. For Cortes and Malinche, it's difficult to know for sure, but Colin Falconer's entertaining novel is a reasonable take on the main characters based on their actions. It is a work I recommend highly.

According to Falconer, the Aztec empire fell because of the need of a woman for revenge and Cortes' ambiguity between his need to elevate God in a heathen world and his undying need for Gold to elevate himself. Malinali is the woman bent on revenge because of an unloving mother who sold her into slavery and a much loved father who is ordered killed by Montecuhzoma because he predicts the eventual fall of the Aztec empire. Offered as a gift to the Spaniards, Malinali becomes Cortes translator and companion. Her motives for her sometimes inventive translations are disparate. First they are based on her belief that Cortes is the god Quetzalcoatl who has returned to bring a Golden Age, an age of peace, back to the people under the yoke of the bloody Aztec Empire and their emperor Montecuhzoma. Eventually she becomes disillusioned with the "god" aspect of Cortes. Even so, her need for revenge and the hope of being the mother of the next ruler of the Mexica overcomes her doubts of the wisdom and actions of her choice of rescuer of her people. The descriptions of the Aztec culture and the people they dominated made me feel as though I was really there in the battles, sacrifices and eventual fall and loss of a culture, that while bloody and misguided, had so much to offer in knowledge and an understanding of our natural world. A wonderful tale that I read in one day that illumines once more what can happen when there is a "failure to communicate".

I was a big fan of Colin Falconer's WHEN WE WERE GODS, a novel about the life of Cleopatra. In his most recent historical novel, he takes on the life of a far less famous woman, but one whose role was probably as important to the politics and history of the New World as Cleopatra's was to the Roman Empire. Malinali (or Malinche, as she's called in modern Mexico) was an Aztec woman sold into slavery to the rival Maya tribe as a child. The daughter of a soothsayer, she always knew her destiny was a heavy one, and that she would live to see a great change in the land of her birth--the return of the god Quetzlcoatl, the feathered serpent of the title. Of course, the white-skinned, long-bearded Feathered Serpent who she encounters is not a god, but Hernando Cortes, the Spanish adventurer on a quest for gold and Christianity. Malinali becomes his ally, and eventually his lover, and together they bring down the mighty Montezuma and his Aztec empire. She also becomes his lover and the mother of his child, and the story of their love affair is as passionate and tragic as the history of modern Mexico. This is a well-researched look into the world of the Mexica--aka Aztec--Empire under Montezuma, as well as a fast-paced read about love, war and death. Some of the battle scenes are rather grisly, but well-drawn, and the supporting characters are interesting and add some very intriguing subplots to the novel. My readers' group enjoyed this novel, mainly because it was so different from many other historical novels about women in history--it doesn't offer any easy answers, but it tells a fascinating story.

So much has been written about the Mexican conquest and the Aztec empire, but FEATHERED SERPENT is the first novel ever to acknowledge the remarkable life of Malinche, the Aztec woman who was Cortes' partner and ally. Colin Falconer takes the outlines of a shadowy and legendary figure and creates a vivid portrait of a woman who was ahead of her time in many respects, and suffered for it. While we can never know much about the real Malinche, this novel gives us a credible and compelling recreation of the amazing woman she must have been, and a very realistic--and not always flattering--portrait of the Spanish conquistadors. Cortes comes across as a deeply flawed hero, and Malinche's horror at his greed and weakness is entirely believable. Anyone who knows the history of the Spanish conquest knows that there was little that was noble and romantic about it, and Colin Falconer manages to acknowledge the sad and brutal reality, while still creating an entertaining and compelling portrait of the time. It's an unusual and thought-provoking story that goes beyond the same old cliches about the conquest. For those interested in historical fiction, it's a very entertaining and enlightening read, with a beautiful woman, sex, death and passion. It is certainly never boring, and I highly recommend it.